Ridicule As Statecraft

The right has gone so far into Crazy it's not even funny anymore.

Although mocking them IS funny, yes. What would comedians do without them?

Ridicule, by the way, is what I recommended way back in in the late 1970s as the best way to deal with so-called terrorist groups. See, terrorism is the last-ditch effort of a politically powerless group to gain serious attention, right? That is what they crave, to be taken seriously, to have their cause or concerns addressed by the big fellas in a sober, serious way. They can't rattle sabers the way big nations do, and they can't go to war or threaten nuclear annihilation, so they turn to crime, specifically murder in the form of explosions, hostage taking, and the occasional mass shooting.

Same as Al Capone in the 1930s trying to make an impression on Bugsy Seigel.

So my epiphany was: MOCK them. Make pitiless fun of them. Ridicule them and their pathetic tiny concerns until NO one takes them seriously. At which point you make them an offer: Play nice and we'll stop belittling you and drop the satire offensive. Grow up and act civilized, period, or stay in Time Out.

And you know what? That will work. It'll work a shitload better than any amount of torture, war, or idiocy will. By taking the fear and mystique away, they have nothing left. Make them look small and insignificant.

And there is even historical precedent, by the way. Oh yes. Look up how the Caliphs and Emperors used Satire and Satirists to write plays and poems and songs marginalizing their enemies and keeping them laughable so that no one ever flocked to their causes. It was a standard piece of statecraft 2000 years ago in Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Byzantium, and so on.

We can and should bring it back in a fully conscious way.

Make Al Qaeda a laughingstock of bumbling idiots, not a cartoon villain only super-Bush can possibly vanquish.

And yes, that's what was really going on. Dicks like Cheney were puffing and bloating their own sad C-student Yale flunky loser reputations by pretending to fight a dragon of their own devising.

Talk about self satire.

Talk about counterproductive, too.

A small group of criminals blew up some buildings. We should have gone after them with law enforcement, and belittled them as desperate stupid nothings over-reaching their station. We should have brushed them off like gnats, instead of giving them attention and making them appear important enough to go to war over. Instead, we react as if they are a sovereign state and pretend to go to war with them, even though they are not a sovereign state and in fact have no real country, etc. And just like other wars against abstracts, such as the one on drugs, it's both indefinable and unwinnable. (Which suits the arms dealers and other endless looters just fine, of course.)

And so we handed them every terrorist's wet dream, to be taken not only seriously, but so seriously that it actually changed their target in drastic ways, and has in fact ended up nearly bankrupting us both financially and morally.

Thanks, Dick.

A real man, an adult, would have brushed it off as a mugging, severe, yes, but ultimately just a criminal act of no consequence to the strength and integrity of our state. We should have built again, ASAP, on the WTC site, rather than leave it as a gaping scar of shame all these years. We should have continued with business-as-usual, to show the world that no two-bit gang of thugs can bring us to our knees.

Instead, what do you do, Dick? You throw a fit, squander the world's goodwill, start a gang war to appease your threatened little ego, institute wiretapping, kidnaping, torture, and a gulag of secret prisons, plus assassination, and in the process jeopardize everything USA ever stood for. Infantile.

We need to go back to being an adult nation with grown-up concerns and mature, considered responses. It will work a lot better than being a fear-driven paranoid panic-stricken infant lashing out at shadows and thrashing in its crib tangled in its blanket of self-induced fears as it wails for its Big Oil bottle and fills its diaper with prejudice, bigotry, and racism.

You listening, GOP? Right wingerss? You are, right now, the most easily ridiculed bunch of buffoons and bozos anyone can think of, a joke without a punch line, a lame duck of a political heritage, a feeble spark of imagined glories that led irrevocably to failure after failure, a howling hollow shell of an echo chamber where lunatics cry and whine and moan and bellow gibberish all day every day. You cannot be taken seriously, and only were because of the harm you did.

You met the enemy and became the enemy in one moronic stumble.

So keep up the geek act, if it amuses you.

The rest of us have grown-up things to say and do.

WTF?

Still hopeful, but Obama's refusal to reinstitute a rule of law by prosecuting Bush / Cheney crimes is a major misstep, not because the scum deserve punishment, (revenge is beside the point with those revolting morons), but for the good of the country, in order to demonstrate once again, symbolically and strongly, that no one, not even the President, is above the law. Unless and until we do that, we have lost the rule of law and that makes us much less than what we once were.

And what disturbed me most about this was Obama's statement that the CIA torturers, (he didn't mention military ones, or civilian ones such as shrinks and MDs), did what they did "in good faith". Well, I'm sorry, but that's the equivalent of saying "They were just following orders," and that in and of itself is a gaffe insensitive and historically ignorant enough to be worthy of W himself. What is going on? Was the surge of hope Obama was elected on just another bait-and-switch manipulation of our sucker bets all along? Should we be singing, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss -- won't get fooled again?"

Another disturbing thing he did was strengthen the legal defenses for the Bush-era wiretapping. WTF, to coin a phrase?

The people who mandated Oh Yes We Can Obama for Change had damned well better start kicking his ass and taking names and making damned sure he complies with the People's wishes.

///

UPDATE / RETHINK -

Given the legal ramifications and political exigencies surrounding and permeating all this, I can now see why we want to proceed in a deliberate manner, with full process and due diligence.

We want any investigation and subsequent prosecution to stick. We want it thorough and genuine, not a political whitewash. This means going forward at a deliberate pace without panic or prejudice. We do not want to see a few fall guys thrown to the wolves so the majority can escape unscathed. Look how many ex-Nazis still operate at high levels in the French government. If we rush to judgement we may well fail to scour ourselves clean of this neo con scum infection.

A Review of The Gentling Box by Lisa Mannetti

The Gentling Box by Lisa Manetti
Dark Hart Press, 2008
310pp, ISBN: 978-0-9787318-9-2

Just finished first novel The Gentling Box by Lisa Manetti and wanted to let you know that I was bowled over.

It's a superb story full of unflinching observation, telling details, and breath-taking turns of events, written beautifully with a masterful control of material, pacing, and story structure.

It is set among the Gypsies in Hungary and Romania at the turn of the last century, a time of change, portent, and dark magic. Imre, a horse trader; his wife Mimi, whom he loves so dearly; their daughter Lenore; his friend Constantine; and others among the nomads have their lives changed irrevocably by the dark magic of Mimi's mother, Anyeta, whose dying wish is to see her daughter one last time. A talisman must also be passed on, a kind of Hand of Glory or Monkey's Paw that carries its own kind of twisted temptation for everyone involved. We see curses, lust for power, corruption, ghosts, possession, self-sacrifice, and redemption portrayed with felicity and conviction. It is a remarkable series of portraits presented in a compelling sequence of well-wrought scenes.

The magic in it is as real as horse sweat and ashes, and the reality described as magical as any wild dream. What an accomplishment, to mix such stuff so well and to tell such a brutal tale so beautifully, with such delicacy of feeling and such empathy. There is real life in it, and the unblinking way Manetti portrays it all is greatly to be admired in an era when so many choose to avert their gazes, or to lie, in order to lessen the sting or to avoid offending prudes. This book tells the blunt truth and therein lies it's great power.

One of the best books I've read in a long time, The Gentling Box is strongly recommended.

That it is Lisa Manetti's first published novel bodes well for her career and for us, her readers. And more good news: she is working on a book about deaths on Mt. Everest. Our wait, to gauge by this work, will be well worthwhile.

/// /// ///

What We're Past

W's endless incompetence and criminality, not to mention W's war on ecology, is all so passé as to be absurd and laughable, except to neo con scum, who are mentally ill, as has been demonstrated conclusively by W's reign of terror.

We're past corporate consumerism.

We're past an Electoral College, and Senators should go back to representing their states.

Congress and the President & Vice President should be directly elected by the people now in a true democracy.

And no-confidence recalls and other Parlimentiary procedures should be instituted.

At least temporary socialization of banking and Wall Street will be necessary for us to regain footing, and obviously tight regulations and controls, with sharp-eyed watch-dogs and full disclosure and transparency of both business and government must be maintained.

The Bush era political prisoners should be released from Gitmo and other gulag prisons and handed over to the World Court in the Hague for independent trials and assessments, since USA has tortured and falsely imprisoned so many of them that no fair trial is possible by USA alone.

The Bush era criminals should be rounded up and first tried stateside, then in the World Court, for treason, war crimes, and high crimes while in office, malfeasance, etc.

We're past a media that propagandizes on behalf of the top 1% of wealth holders.

We're past the attack on the middle class and the class warfare being perpetrated against the people by Beltway insiders, Wall Street, and Big Media.

We're past undeclared, unwarranted, illegal, and unwinnable wars perpetrated solely to keep Cold War era spending levels -- and profiteering -- going.

We're past being 15th overall in healthcare among developed countries and we're well past not having universal free healthcare.

We're past politics sucking right wing fundamentalism's cock and making a war on science on behalf of the mentally ill and the unconscionably cynical who exploit them.

I could go on and on.

Movies, Images, Words, Files, Journals, Speech, Poems

Movies are easier than books. Images are evocative in montage because viewers tend to make stories of them. Movies are interactive.

Words are speech and render the listener more passive, less apt to do the work of making a story of them.

Files and journals are palimpsests to be excavated like archaeological sites and sifted for their treasures.

Poems are flowering vines of thought.

It Is Enough

Took a whole work day, due to a headache, to produce 4.5 finished pages of a novel. At least they came alive for me. In patterning this novel I'm sifting details to a greater degree, to keep it concise. Places arise in scenes where entire chapters could be inserted and I have to decide whether the plot's pace can take such an expansion. Digressions cost momentum.

It's about a third finished, this novel. I thought I'd have it done by October 2008. I used to do 100,000 words in 3 months. Here we are 3 months down the line from the projected end run and I'm only now reaching the 30,000-ish page mark. What I have is good, at least.

Then there is another novel I'm working on, an erotic novel. It's coming along, too, but the plot has taken charge. Needing to wedge more sex into an erotic plot is not a good sign. A real novel arose, is the trouble.

The important thing here is the fact that a publisher is waiting for it. I can't let it slide into mainstream. I'm using a fountain pen to write it, having wanted to slow down and think more, but now I'm wondering if that has worked to the detriment of erotica's conventions. Perhaps less thought would help; I might switch to keyboard to gain speed again. Or I may tag-team, switching from novel to novel and from pen to keyboard and back.

If you wonder how much changes when fiction moves from pen to computer, from journal to file, from page to electron -- when a second and subsequent draft goes down, in other words -- the answer is probably less than you'd think, but to more effect and purpose than you'd think. What is changed is important to deepen texture and character, or to highlight plot points or themes.

First draft is spinning the yarn, second and subsequent drafts weave the cloth and tailor the clothes. In an oral tradition, the trick is repetition, honing the effects and tones until the story comes alive and can survive on its own.

That s rarer than you'd think. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is one example. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber is another. O. Henry's stories "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief" have been copied innumerable times. There is The Odyssey by Homer, obviously, and many ancient myths from many traditions. Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, and Little Red Riding Hood are all ancient tales. Disney understood what his successors so obviously do not about resonating old tales in new ways.

Joseph Campbell is one of the keys to grasping all this stuff about stories and resonance. The Hero With A Thousand Faces is Campbell's pivotal work but almost all his books are excellent for fiction writers. Seeing interactions among story forms and types of heroes and villains, seeing links, repeated patterns, and changing approaches helps you know the materials best suited for your personal stories.

Look at the resonance the best Disney achieved, as contrasted by the shuddersome schlock the worst Disney becomes. Lion King went back to basics and became an instant classic. Lesser works go straight to video and thence to the vaults.

Movies could benefit generally from such considerations as resonance with myth and the ancient story patterns. The original Star Wars actually mined, or at least mimicked, Joseph Campbell's wisdom -- along with much of Frank Herbert's Dune, of course -- but by the time George Lucas made the sequels he evidently forgot anything he'd once known when the aging Campbell spent his last days on Lucas's Skywalker Ranch.

Steven Spielberg's career followed a similar arc. He'd used Hitchcock and Disney as models and produced classics such as Jaws, E. T., and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. When he branched out onto his own ego's limb, however, the results were mixed. Schindler's List and Munich were excellent but the last installment of the Indiana Jones saga left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. A taste we recognized from Star Wars: Episode One.

Failing to remain true to the old stories left them ruins of what might once have been.

Considering movies cost upwards of a hundred million dollars for blockbusters and a third to half that for so-called little films, you'd think the producers would insist on starting with the strongest material possible. Good writing, good stories and strong scripts, are any movie's foundation.

Producers try every way possible to ensure they'd make money with the finished product except the most important and, in many ways, the easiest and least expensive: classic, mythic, deeply resonant storytelling.

And old stories crop up in surprising guises, too. What is The Silence of the Lambs but Little Red Riding Hood painted noir? Clarice Starling is Red, going among the wolves, risking herself in dark woods... and she's even eaten, eventually, in a way, in the books at least. Resonance to our childhood deepens the whole experience and the reciting of nursery rhymes by the Jaime Gum character is unutterably chilling.

Sometimes movies or books catch resonance and are boosted into a higher regard than they deserve. Se7en was an example. It's not nearly as good as it is considered by many, being too artificial in its florid crimes, anything but accurate about police procedure, and hokey in its gotcha ending. It is a ragged plot unsure what it wants to accomplish. But, because it cites the seven deadly carnal sins, and comments on them in modern society explicitly through the Morgan Freeman character's dialogue, the film gets extra credit.

Fallen, from 1998, with Denzel Washington as a cop chasing a demon through several murder victims, almost got a boost from the eerie subject matter, with its hint at fallen angels and the proximity of an embodied Lucifer. Trouble was, the plot did not handle such matters cleanly, and this interfered with the resonance. It did not follow basic patterns and so fizzled into the equivalent of a mediocre X-FILES episode.

Should Clive Barker's novel Mister B. Gone ever be filmed it could easily suffer such a fate because producers will think it too simple. And yet Barker knows the old stories, and keeps to the chords to beautiful effect.

Some of these flawed films could be edited to improve them. Hitchcock could do it, or Welles. Both of them understood which parts of a story to expand, which needs only a hint. Hell, the final scene in Hitch's North By Northwest is perhaps 3 seconds in duration. It needs to be there but needs no elaboration whatsoever, and he understood these facts.

Knowing so well the function of each scene and every part of a story allows you to know which parts to compress or which to cut. What can be implied and what must be explained or shown blatantly.

All this and more are part of the craft of storytelling, and all good writers are lifelong students of this craft.

I've been observing a lot of such thinking as I read Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Partly it's the graphic novel format, with its comic book conventionalities. Partly it's his concision. You can see choices he made about which panels to emphasize, what to leave off the page, and which key snippets of dialogue or narration are required to keep the story both moving and clearly in focus.

And so here we are back to my headache and all the thinking I did to produce only a few pages. Will readers appreciate all the work? Few will notice and that's as it should be; a fine desk, crafted from tropical hard woods, hand made with years of experience and with quiet but intense care, shows only a perfect whole and is considered a single piece of furniture, both attractive and useful, sturdy and elegant. Despite its many parts and pieces, and its complex design, it, like a good story, is of-a-piece and becomes one thing whole.

If I work right, then only other writers, and few of them at that, will grasp what must have gone into my work. And that's good craftsmanship, and good storytelling.

For now, genug.

Or, as Kant said at the end of his longest story, "Sufficit".

/// /// ///

Rejection City Rubble

These questions came up on Jay Lake's blog: How many rejections came to you before your first publication, and how many rejections have you accrued?

///

We don’t all keep track. I sure don’t. I just try to send at least two out for every one I get back. It’s a process for me rather than a reckoning or an accounting.

I’d submitted sporadically for six years, starting in 1974.

In 1980 I began submitting regularly. My first sale was “Weal & Woe” to MZB’s in Spring 1990. I’d had many near-misses, including almost snagging 3rd place in the first Twilight Zone contest, won by Dan Simmons.

So, if I had to estimate, I’d say maybe, what, 1000 - 1500 rejections before that first paying sale? Wow, I had no idea. If I had been keeping track I might have been discouraged.

Nah.

I’m not counting unpaid publication or various other things, either. Face it, I just don’t pay attention to much beyond what I’m writing at the time, which explains my lack of business success. As you’ve said, Jay, the business part is what too many of us ignore to our detriment. So true.

I’ve never been able to internalize taking a more businesslike approach. And yes, I recognize this as a fatal flaw.

Once you're writing publishable prose, rejections are irrelevant to such things as talent or skill. I've long since concluded they are essentially random. Either an editor likes what you send in the few moments it slides under editorial gaze, or not. Same editor may later buy what has been previously rejected, or wonder what they ever saw in a work after they buy it.

This is why I don't bother with them. Sometimes there are good reasons for a rejection, sometimes not, but either way I have no control over that, beyond trying to conform to each publication's standards or to each editors expressed needs.

To me, rejections are noise, acceptances are signal, and payment is what the signal delivers.