Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and a retired Navy captain, joined with five other Representatives and Senators, all Democrats, who had served the nation either in the military or the intelligence community in releasing a statement that said military officers had the right to refuse to carry out “illegal orders.”

Trump immediately denounced the six and called their actions “seditious” and supported the idea of hanging all six. Subsequent to that, Secretary of Defense/War Hegseth began action to “court martial” Senator Kelly.

First, none of the six suggested disobeying an existing law. They only expressed an opinion that the Constitution laid out rights and duties and that military officers should not obey orders by the President that were illegal under the Constitution.

Trump and Hegseth are taking the position that any order by the President is, by definition, legal, despite the words of the Constitution that suggest that a President is not omnipotent. In the case of Richard Nixon, the Congress clearly rejected Nixon’s contention that any action by the President was, de facto, legal.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. In addition, the Constitution clearly states that the opinions of Senators and Representatives in pursuit of their duties are protected speech.

Trump had a temper-tantrum over being told that it was possible that not everything he “orders” may not be legal, and that if he issued illegal orders, senior officers had the right to refuse such orders. Hegseth then followed up with a statement that all members of the military should presume that ALL orders are legal and should be followed and that those who did not agree would be investigated under military law.

When a President declares that opinions and advice contrary to his beliefs and wishes are seditious and treasonous and should result in capital punishment, particularly when those opposing his views are citing the Constitution, he’s not behaving as the President of the United States but as third-world dictator. And, of course, loyal lackey Hegseth immediately followed orders to prosecute Senator Kelly for exercising his rights as a citizen and a Senator.

That should tell Americans something, but will it?

Pardoning the national turkey dinner,
Even if he’s not a millionaire sinner.
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

Proposing a peace for Ukraine,
But all of it for Russia’s gain.
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

Some eight years ago, I wrote a blog post about the swallowing of Thanksgiving by the commercialization of Christmas. From what I can see, at least here in Cedar City, Thanksgiving has almost vanished, and Christmas decorations are proliferating in early November, along with greater hype of special buying days like Black Friday, Black Monday, and cyber-whatever-the-hell-day it may be.

Now that the Christmas commercialists have vanquished Thanksgiving, which isn’t totally surprising, given that Thanksgiving is based on expressing thanks and gratitude for what one has rather than spending more and more on everything for longer and longer, those self-same Christmas commercialists appear to have taken aim at Halloween.

Or perhaps some other group has, and the Christmas commercialists are merely taking advantage of it.

We’ve lived in the same house for thirty-two years, and, on average, the number of trick-or-treaters has declined over this period. Part of that I attributed to the aging of the homeowners in our area, but for at least the last five years, more and more younger families with small children have been moving in, yet the numbers of trick-or-treating children have reached the point to where we had exactly two this year, leaving us with an inordinate amount of individually wrapped candy.

I’ve wondered if it was just a cultural peculiarity of our area, but I did an informal canvass of friends in Cedar City and of our offspring spread across the United States (if predominantly on the coasts), and they’ve all noticed the same phenomenon.

Now, possibly this diminution of Halloween decoration and trick-or-treating may also be the result of internet-created isolation, ICE-induced fear of public spaces, and growing public paranoia, or it just might be an outcome from internet-created laziness, because trick-or-treating requires costumes, parental supervision (at least for small children), and lots of walking, and candy can be ordered with a mouse click or iPhone tap and delivered to the door.

Whatever the reason, from what I can tell, there definitely is such diminution, no doubt to the delight of the accountants of the Christmas commercialists.

Over the past two months, I’ve had email after email from various “book clubs,” each praising a book of mine recently published and saying that it really deserved more acclamation and attention. While I had to agree with that (what author wouldn’t?), it was clear that these were blatant scams, some even suggesting that paying a few “influential readers” would spur greater attention. Others were more indirect in their initial “inquiry,” not that I pursued any of them.

The most recent, and most ironically amusing, came from an individual purporting to represent the Washington [D.C.] Science Fiction Association and declaring that WSFA wanted to highlight Haze and The Hammer of Darkness for the association’s 2025 “Autumn Author Spotlight.”

Having lived in the Washington D.C. area for nearly twenty years, at time when I was active in attending WSFA conventions – primarily the long-vanished Disclave, I was rather skeptical about an “Author Spotlight,” given that WSFA doesn’t promote books except through its convention.

In addition, I’ve retained loose ties with individuals prominent in area conventions and was the Author Guest of Honor at Balticon in 2024, where a number of convention functionaries were also involved with WSFA, and it would be highly unlikely for them to spotlight me so soon after Balticon. Add to that the fact that conventions take a year or more to organize of fans and someone offering to “spotlight” me for a fall event this year was preposterous. Then add that the book they wanted to spotlight was a mass-market paperback reprint published nine years ago that contained two novels – The Hammer of Darkness (first published in 1985) and Haze (published in 2009). At the time, Tom Doherty thought that the reprint would be a good idea, because he thought neither book had gotten the support it should have, but even then, there wasn’t that much publicity.

And, finally, WSFA had to put a warning on the WSFA website that scammers were impersonating WSF.

Obviously, these scammers are targeting authors who don’t seem to be best-selling authors and are playing on authorial vanity, and no author is without some vanity, including me. But scammers annoy me, and as a semi-public service, I thought I ought to bring up the matter.

Criminals strike in the dark
But ICE patrols the sunlit park.
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

Most of the people in the United States, if you asked them, would say that they’re for individual freedom.

The first problem we face in maintaining freedom lies in the definition of “freedom,” because each individual has a personal definition of what freedom should be, and that makes it difficult for government to come up with laws define liberty or freedom in a fashion satisfactory to all Americans.

The second problem lies in population density and the need to maintain order.

As Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers pointed out, one cannot have freedom without an ordered society, and the greater the population density, the more restrictions that are necessary to maintain order.

Those restrictions don’t have to be imposed by law, and, in fact, in the past many restrictions maintaining order were socially imposed through manners and customs. Those manners and customs were essentially based on British culture, and as more and more Americans come from other backgrounds and/or question “the old ways,” customs have become less effective in maintaining social order.

So, governments impose standards of behavior through laws. This has created a growing attitude of believing that, if something isn’t prohibited, it’s acceptable to do it, an attitude taken to extremes by Donald Trump and many of his followers. As I’ve pointed out before, this trend leads either to anarchy or authoritarianism.

It also leads to more people wanting to use government as a means of imposing their beliefs on others, contrary to the views of the founding fathers that government should provide a basic framework of laws, as opposed to a legal structure regulating every aspect of life.

Such an all-encompassing legal structure, of course, effectively limits freedom, yet few people seem to realize that, if we just behaved ourselves and respected others, we wouldn’t need so many laws and regulations.

The problem with that is that there’s always someone who wants money and/or power and has no respect for others, or for what others have built or created, and believes that they are entitled to do anything that isn’t prohibited… and when they get away with it, it encourages others.

All of which is why Benjamin Franklin said that the founding fathers had created a Republic… if future Americans could keep it.

In this time of shutdowns, continuing inflation, and economic and political news so complex that even learned savants can’t simplify matters, I’ve decided to post a short four-line poem every Monday that simplifies an issue. The first one is more general, but after that, they’ll get more specific.

Sporting overlong red ties
And endless overflowing lies,
Who’s the chump?
You… or Donald Trump?

P.S. Feel free to share.

Recent data and reports by a number of economists and financial institutions tend to confirm what last Tuesday’s election results also suggested – that the United States effectively has an economy with two branches, one for those who have decent-paying jobs and financial reserves and another for those who have neither, a condition described as K-shaped, where the same financial conditions have differing impacts for different people.

Higher interest rates and rising stock prices benefit those who can save and invest, but those higher interest rates punish those with mortgages, credit card balances, and student loan debt. Higher interest rates also discourage businesses from hiring and encourage streamlining and economizing, which usually means layoffs.

The youth (ages 16-24) unemployment rate increased to 10.5% by this past September, and that’s three times the rate for Gen X and Millennials. Average new car prices topped $50,000 for the first time ever, and an indication of the impact on the less fortunate is car repossessions, which have increased 16% over last year and are at the highest rate since 2009. Add to that the rising cost of student loan repayments, which have increased by six percent over last year.

When you consider that the average cost of a basic one-bedroom apartment in New York City is $4,000 a month, that might just explain the results of the recent mayoral election.

On the other side, the gross profit margin of the pharmaceutical industry is over 70%, compared to 2% for the pharmacies that dispense and sell those prescription drugs, which might explain why the pharmacy clerks are having a hard time of it, while the drug company executives are rolling in dough… and why more than a few people, primarily younger adults, still openly back Luigi Mangione… and why Zohran Mamdani managed to attract over 90,000 largely youthful volunteers to support his successful campaign for NYC Mayor.

Over the past few years, I’ve seen more than a few complaints about the cost of books, particularly the cost of mass market paperbacks. So I did a little analysis. My first book, The Fires of Paratime, was published in 1982 as a mass market paperback, for a price of $2.95 (which would theoretically cost $9.81 in today’s dollars). In 1993, Tor published The Towers of The Sunset (the second Recluce book) in mass market paperback format for $6.99 (costing $12.50 in today’s dollars).

But those comparisons fail to take into account the length of books. The Fires of Paratime was only 239 pages long (for a price of 1.2 cents per page), while The Towers of the Sunset was 536 pages long (for a price of 1.3 cents per page).

Over the next ten years, the price of my books increased fairly consistently at the rate of inflation while the price per page rose to around 1.5 cents. That per-page-price remained around that level until 2023, when it jumped 33% to 2.0 cents per page. Even so, that increase didn’t cover inflation. When my last mass market paperback was published (Contrarian in 2024), it listed at $14.99, but for Tor to cover the increased inflationary costs would have required a price of $16.25, which most readers are unwilling or unable to pay without sacrificing something else.

Historically speaking, the price of paperback books has pretty much tracked inflation over the past sixty years – until 2023. While a mass market paperback still remains the same in inflation adjusted dollars as it has for the last twenty years, the income of the average middle-class or poorer American hasn’t kept up with inflation.

And that’s not a problem that the publishing industry can solve, because the industry is low margin, where the majority of editors make less than legal secretaries.