Signal boost: Scalzi's "Thoughts and Prayers"

(NOTE: normally I don't repost other people's work in toto, but John Scalzi's response to the mass shooting in Orlando definitely bears repeating.)

A man goes into an immigration services center in Binghamton New York, blocks the exit in the back with his car, goes through the front door with handguns, body armor and ammunition. He shoots the receptionists and opens fire on a citizenship class. He murders thirteen. This is horrific. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

A psychiatrist trained to help others with the stress of combat goes to Ft. Hood, the army base at which he is stationed, and opens fire on his fellow soldiers and some civilians, too. Another thirteen people are murdered there. Three are killed charging the shooter. Words cannot express my sorrow. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

A professor is denied tenure at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. She goes to a department faculty meeting and in that conference room pulls out a nine-millimeter handgun and shoots six people, three of whom she manages to murder. Those people were just doing their jobs and what happened to them is terrible. I don’t want to have to think about it any further. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

A truck driver in Manchester, Connecticut comes out of a company disciplinary hearing for allegedly stealing beer and starts shooting up his place of work. He murders eight people, calls his mother and tells her about it, and then shoots himself. Gun control discussions are a mess in this country and they never go anywhere productive, there’s no middle ground, and they make me tired thinking about them. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

In Tucson, Arizona, a member of Congress is meeting with her constituents in the parking lot of a supermarket, and a 22-year-old man comes up and shoots her straight in the head. A representative to Congress, can you believe that! She somehow survives, but he murders six others, ranging in age from nine to 79. That’s quite a range. Surely the attempted assassination of a US Representative will start a substantive discussion by someone. In the meantime, I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Seal Beach, California, where a man and a woman are having a custody dispute. His solution: Enter his wife’s place of work, a hair salon, and open fire on anyone there. He murders his ex-wife and seven other people, including one man not even in the salon. He is in his car in the parking lot outside the salon. Bad luck. Here’s an interesting thing: there is a sort of magical power to saying that you offer your thoughts and prayers.

Oakland, California, and at a small Christian college, a man who had been expelled for behavioral and anger management problems decides that he’s going to find an administrator he has issues with. He doesn’t find her, so instead grabs a secretary, enters a classroom and orders the students there to line against a wall. Some refuse. He shoots, reloads and shoots some more. Seven people are murdered. The shooter later says he’s sorry. The magical power of saying that you offer your thoughts and prayers is that once you do it, you’re not required to do anything other than to offer your thoughts and prayers.

In Aurora, Colorado, a midnight audience of Batman fans are half an hour into the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s superhero trilogy when a man enters the theater, clad in protective armor, sets off two gas canisters and starts shooting. Some audience members think this is a stunt tied into the film. It’s not a stunt, and the shooter, armed with an assault rife, a shotgun and a glock, murders a dozen people, ten of whom die right there in the theater. When police visit the shooter’s home, they find it rigged with explosives. The shooter placed a camera to record what happens if the police just barge in. Saying “thoughts and prayers” is performative, which is to say that just in saying it, you’ve performed an action. Prayers leave your mind and go to God. It is a blessed, holy and as such apparently sufficient thing, to offer your thoughts and prayers.

Sunday morning, and in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, members of the Sikh temple there have gathered for services and meditation and are preparing a communal meal when a white supremacist and Army veteran starts shooting, murdering six and wounding a police officer before killing himself. Did you know that Sikhs are often confused by the unknowing and possibly uncaring for being Muslim, and that the excuse of “I thought they were Muslims” is itself a sign of racial hatred? Mind you, there are people who will say to you that it’s not enough, only to offer your thoughts and prayers.
In Minneapolis, a man is called into an office by his supervisor and told he is losing his job. The man replies, “Oh, really?” and pulls out a handgun, shooting the supervisor after a struggle for the weapon, eventually murdering five others before killing himself. Indeed, people particularly expect more from lawmakers, who have the ability to call hearings and allow government studies and even change laws, rather than only to offer their thoughts and prayers.

Brookfield, Wisconsin, another hair salon, another estranged couple. The wife seeks a restraining order when the husband threatens to burn her with acid and set her on fire with gasoline. He does neither. He does, however, murder her, along with two other women. Witnesses say the wife tried to protect the others before she died. But again, even if you’re a lawmaker, with the ability to do things that could have concrete impact, you might argue that your responsibility to women being murdered by husbands, workers murdered by co-workers, religious minorities murdered by bigots, soldiers murdered by other soldiers, innocents murdered by those who are not, ends when you, in a tweet, Facebook post or press release, offer your thoughts and prayers.

A man enters an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S carbine rifle, murders twenty children, all of whom are either six or seven years old.

We pause here a moment to think about that.

Twenty children. Ages six, or seven.

And here maybe you think to yourself, this is it. This is the place and time where thoughts and prayers in fact aren’t enough, where those who only offer their thoughts and prayers recognize that others see them in their inaction, see that the convenient self-absolution of thoughts and prayers, that the magical abnegation thoughts and prayers offer, is no longer sufficient, is no longer proper, is no longer just or moral, or even offers the appearance of morality.

We pause here a moment, and wait to see what happens next.

And then they come. One after another.
 
I offer my thoughts and prayers.

And it keeps going.

Five murdered in Santa Monica, California by a gunman. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

12 murdered in a running firefight through the Washington Navy Yard in DC. Like a ritual, I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Ft. Hood, Texas again, for another three murdered. Like a litany, I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Six murdered in Isla Vista, California. Violence against women is horrible, and I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Nine murdered in Charleston, South Carolina. It’s unspeakable that violence against black Americans has happened like this, and I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Five murdered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Muslims should answer for the crimes of this person, even if they do not know him or would in any way condone the action, and I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Nine murdered in Roseburg, Oregon. I offer my thoughts and prayers.

Three murdered in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thoughts and prayers.

Fourteen murdered in San Bernadino. Thoughts. Prayers.

Fifty murdered in Orlando.

Fifty people, in a gay club, by a shooter who his father says was disgusted by the sight of two men kissing, and who news reports now tell us had pledged allegiance to ISIS.

And what do we do now, I wonder, when the victims are who they are and the perpetrator is who he is, the situation is ripe for posturing, and there’s a phrase to be used that allows one to assert maximum public virtue with minimum personal effort or responsibility?

What do we do now, when thoughts and prayers are easy, and everything else is hard?

Here is the thing: In the aftermath of terrible violence, offer thoughts, and prayers, if it is your desire to do so.

Then offer more than thoughts and prayers. Ask for more than thoughts and prayers. Vote for more than thoughts and prayers. Help those for whom thoughts and prayers are the start of their responsibilities, not the abdication of them. And as for the others, you may politely remind them of Matthew 6:5-6, and perhaps also Matthew 7:21-23. Perhaps they will see themselves in the words there. Perhaps not. They’re worth thinking on regardless.

“I offer my thoughts and prayers.”

Thank you.

It’s not enough.

It never was.

What more do you have to offer?

(From Whatever, June 12th, 2016.)

Baylor: the new word in college sports that nauseates

There's an old truism that the cover-up is far worse than the crime. That definitely fits the bill with the crisis at Baylor, where a series of assaults against women by members of the football team (and others, but mainly the football team) led to the firing of head coach Art Briles and the demotion (reassignment, really) of former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr from his position as university President to university chancellor. He'll also continue to be a professor at the Baylor school of law, and all of this is especially ironic considering where he made his bones as a prosecutor:

Mr. Starr’s demotion delivered a twist to the biography of a man whose reputation was built on what many considered an overzealous pursuit of allegations of sexual transgressions by Mr. Clinton. Now he is being punished for leading an administration that, according to a report by an outside law firm commissioned by the university’s governing board, looked the other way when Baylor football players were accused of sex crimes, and sometimes convicted of them.

The report (link here) is horrifying enough, but it's made even worse by the fact that - as usual - there's already a squad of numbskulls lining up to support Briles because he is, after all, the coach. If this sounds at all familiar, it should. Because St. Joe Paterno (the greatest man who's ever lived, according to a group of similar-minded dolts) had a whole parcel of losers in the ethical behavior sweepstakes (for example John Ziegler; for another, Franco Harris) lining up to defend him in the wake of the Penn State scandal. The similarities are disturbing enough (again, the leadership teams of a major college sports program and university just sat there with their collective junk in their hands and did next to nothing about the scandal), but the added weight of attempts to coerce the victims into not reporting the assaults only made things that much worse.

And this brings up the following issue: I'm a sports fan. I'm also hardly deaf to the fact that university programs are now (and perhaps always have been) perfectly willing to put the success of their athletic programs above the safety of the general public. I guess I could be optimistic and hope that this, and Penn State, will finally sink in and that the NCAA and individual schools will stop this outright sociopathic behavior once and for all.

I could be optimistic about that.

But I'm not.   

He'll get around to how lizard men control everything at a later date

Via NPR.org: Donald Trump (the man who is easily identifiably by the stoat living on his head who is also running for President) loves conspiracy theories. He loves them so much, in fact, that I'm astounded he hasn't called Glenn Beck up for advice on generating them now that Weepy's candidate of choice Ted Cruz is fini.

Then again, compared to someone like Mary Lou Bruner (a candidate for - what else? - the Texas State Board of Education), he's strictly a small-timer.

Now reading

Wheelworld by Harry Harrison.

A short, helpful hint to Amanda S. Green

Ms. Green: no offense, but in case you actually are paying attention the chief reason why the Sad Puppies are "called all sorts of names" is because Larry Correia, Brad C. Torgersen and their fellow travelers blatantly gamed the Hugo Award nominating process two years in a row and then acted like rancorous assholes - loudly, and repeatedly - when they lost.

Then again, considering your embrace of a certain individual who can apparently engage in this sort of name calling (as long as he burns down the Hugos to your liking, of course) as a comrade in arms, I'll have to consider your judgment concerning matters like this as being just a little, well, suspect.

Now reading

Homeworld by Harry Harrison.

"What a great guy he is, despite burning down that orphanage and all..."

Let's face it: one of the surest signs that our political system is broken to the point of needing an entire truckload of Super Glue is when pols come crawling out of the woodwork to lessen the blow of sentencing of yet another Illinois "statesman" gone horribly wrong.

The man in question this time around is convicted fraudster and alleged serial pedophile Dennis Hastert. And one of his defenders is Tom DeLay, who may not be in prison anymore but still qualifies as high-grade pond scum - especially after putting up the mistletoe on this one.

Normally the cliché pretty much goes "it is to laugh", but that's far too polite for my mood. Try inserting the word "vomit" instead and you've got it just about right.

17 for the 17th

Music and nothing but, for once. If it's not from Ireland, it certainly has Irish in it. Slainte!

Thin Lizzy: Emerald (live)

Them featuring Van Morrison: Mystic Eyes

Rory Gallagher: Just Hit Town

The Pogues with Kristy MacColl: Fairytale of New York

The Undertones: Get Over You

The Waterboys: Fisherman's Blues

The Corrs: Toss the Feathers

Dropkick Murphys: Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya

Boiled in Lead: Jolly Tinker

Clannad: I Will Find You

U2: Bullet the Blue Sky (live)

Therapy?: Opal Mantra

Stiff Little Fingers: You Can't Say Crap on the Radio

Mael Mordha: Cluain Tarbh

Chieftains: March to the Battle

The Tossers: Rocky Road to Dublin

Enya: Echoes in Rain

Adventures in fatuousness

It takes a special kind of obnoxious to be John C. Wright these days.

It isn't just the past odd behavior he displayed towards an animated series that displayed approximately one moment of supposedly questionable morality that caused him to go completely nuts online. It's any number of things beyond that (a few of which are pointed out here), but the one that finally caused me to comment here is the wonderful, wonderful job he recently did sucking up to an especially unpalatable dipshit in order to apparently restart their mutual vendetta against "Puppy-kickers", which apparently includes anyone who chooses to crack open a SF novel that might not have been authored by the flatulent ghost of Benito Mussolini.

First things first, though. This is the tongue bath that he gives the unfathomable Mr. Beale as quoted in a post from File 770:

The Puppy-kickers are our ideological foes bent on replacing popular and well crafted sci fi tales with politically correct science-free and entertainment-free moping dreck that reads like something written by a highschool creative writing course dropout.

The Puppy-kickers have repeatedly and vehemently assured us assured us that soliciting votes from likeminded fans for stories you judge worthy was a “slate” and therefore was (for reasons not specified) totally and diabolically evil and wrong and bad, was not something insiders had been doing for decades, and was always totally inexcusable, except when they did it, and voted in a slate to grant ‘No Award’ to categories where they had lost their stranglehold over the nominations.

In that spirit, I hereby officially announce in my capacity as the Grand Inquisitor of the Evil Legion of Evil Authors, that the following list is the recommended reading list of our Darkest Lord only, and not a voting slate
.
These are the recommendations of my editor, Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, the most hated man in Science Fiction, but certainly the best editor I have had the pleasure to work with.

Wow. Pompous, self-servingly inaccurate and  vitriolic. Three great tastes that taste great together.

Memo to John: there's an actual reason why Beale is so hated in SF circles. It's because he's done everything to destroy those same SF circles (ineptly and without success, but the effort is still there) as we know them. And because he's a vituperative fascist crank. On practically everything. I mean, you have actually read some of the stuff he's written in the past, right?

But beyond that, this is what gets me: a few weeks ago, David G. Hartwell passed away. As is pointed out in the File 770 link above, he was John C. Wright's editor at Tor Books - you know, the same Tor Books Wright now wants people to forget was his former publisher. Even Wright managed to come to his senses for once and was quite respectful of  Hartwell after his death.

But now Beale is the best editor he's ever had the pleasure to work with, despite not possessing a single molecule of the same sort of talent Hartwell had, much less the graciousness.

Sure. Of course. Two birds of a feather, etc.

It just affirms that whatever resides under Wright's fedora, it's certainly not helping him to think.

Ziggy boards the starship bound for home

David Bowie, 1947-2016

The end of a very loud era

Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister, 1940-2015.