I listened to Robert F. Kennedy’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, but could only bear to listen a short time, largely because what I heard revealed that the majority of the Senators and RFK appeared either to suffer from near-complete innumeracy, or were so locked into policy positions that they appeared to suffer terminal innumeracy.

The discussion over national life-expectancy data was more than a little revealing. The life-expectancy for Americans is lower than all other western industrial countries, yet the U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care per capita.

There are several reasons for these figures. First, one of the factors lowering average lifespans of a population is high infant mortality, i.e., the death of a child before his or her first birthday. Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. infant mortality rate is fifty-fifth, and is at least twice as high as all other first-world nations. Add to that that the U.S. maternal death rate is close to five times that of all other major industrial countries and is continuing to rise.

The second factor lowering average lifespans is the percentage of the population lacking basic health care. In the U.S., roughly 25 million Americans lack health care insurance and over 100 million do not have a regular health care provider. Yet of those uninsured Americans, 74% have a full-time worker, and another 11% are working part-time. While 62% of uninsured American adults have health care debts, as might be expected, 44% of Americans with health insurance also reported health care debts.

When roughly a third of the U.S. population does not have a regular health care provider and almost half the population cannot afford even routine health care without going into debt, one might think these factors just possibly might contribute to a lower life expectancy for Americans, but for some reason, so far as I could tell, the only factor that was touched on was the high cost of medical care for those who can afford it, when the reason for lagging life expectancy lies in those who cannot afford or obtain adequate medical care.

In addition, there’s been no significant increase in the number of MDs graduating from U.S. medical schools over the past five years, despite an estimated population increase of nearly five percent.

So why don’t Senators and Representatives know these numbers… or is it that they don’t care?

Donald Trump, in various ways, has indicated that he believes the American people want – and need – a dictator, and that he’s the right man for the job.

For all of his many and terrible faults, Trump’s greatest political skill is identifying and weaponizing the problems that most concern people – and then finding the worst possible way to address each problem, usually in a fashion that appears superficially acceptable to a great many people, especially his base, but which will lead to far greater difficulties in the future.

As for being dictator… the real and very basic problem he’s attempting to address is the fact that American government in so many areas is no longer working very well, and even where and when it is, too many politicians decry the situation because whatever is being done doesn’t fit their preconceptions of the way issues and problems should be addressed.

As a result, all too often, problem after problem either doesn’t get addressed or is addressed in a way that offends a significant percentage of the population.

And people are tired of problems not being addressed and solved.

Trump didn’t create this situation. The idealogues of both political parties did by inserting extreme religious and social ideologies into the political dialogue and campaigns, and the rank and file in those parties allowed them to do so.

The result is that people are becoming more and more disillusioned with what they perceive as a barely functioning democracy and are more and more willing to accept a dictator whom they see as willing to act.

And Trump and his ever-growing legions of sycophants glory in his filling that position.

Protests against his high-handed and increasingly marginally legal (and sometimes illegal) actions won’t stop him. The only thing that will is better government getting things done, rather than getting in the way of getting things done.

And very few of Trump’s opponents seem to understand that…or perhaps they just can’t abandon ideology in favor of moderate, practical compromise. Equally unfortunately, neither can his supporters.

I have a moderately well-behaved dachshund. By moderately well-behaved, I mean that he only barks when another dog invades his territory, i.e., our property, or when he feels threatened. This isn’t a problem for me because when he’s outside, he’s always on leash.

We take a walk almost every morning, and he’s the third dog I’ve walked over the years here. Sometimes we encounter other dogs. Because Cedar City has leash laws and most people here are law-abiding, the other dogs are always on leash as well. I’ve encountered unleashed dogs less than ten times in over thirty years, and most either wanted to play or were merely curious.

The other day, however, we ran across an inexperienced dog walker with a golden doodle and another dog, which I’m fairly certain was an Italian greyhound or something similar. Knowing that Buddy Mozart is wary of strange dogs, I attempted to create a little more space.

The other dog-walker declared his dogs were friendly and proceeded to steer them directly toward us. Buddy Mozart does not like to be crowded, and he barked and backed off. I reined him in and away from the other dogs, at which point the Italian greyhound snapped his inadequate leash and pranced toward Buddy Mozart, obviously just obsequiously oblivious to the fact that Buddy Mozart had no interest at all in being friendly.

Buddy Mozart made no move toward the greyhound, but barked and growled, trying to convey that he wanted no part of the greyhound’s overtures, while the other dog-walker proceeded to have great difficulty controlling his now-leashless dog.

No person or dog got hurt. No dog bit or snapped, and Buddy Mozart and I moved away and proceeded to finish our otherwise uneventful walk.

As we did, I got to thinking about the brief encounter. The clearly clueless Italian greyhound and the man walking him reminded me of a certain type of excessively friendly person who invades your space and doesn’t understand that you’re just not up for it… and he obviously also didn’t understand dachshunds.

The first science fiction books I read (in the late 1950s) were either mass market paperbacks or, very occasionally, library hardcovers. But back then not many SF books were printed in hardcover, and most so published were “classics,” like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , H. Rider Haggard’s She, or Frankenstein .

The first paperback SF novel that I recall reading was A.E. van Vogt’s Slan, which I snitched from my mother’s SF bookcase and took to school – except it was stolen from me on the school bus. Fortunately, that occurred on the way home, and I’d finished reading it. Explaining the loss to my mother was another matter. Still, I have a particular fondness for Slan, because one of the first author blurbs I got was from A.E. van Vogt for my first novel (The Fires of Paratime, later republished in an uncut version as The Timegod).

My first eight novels were only published in paperback, except for The Fires of Paratime , which had a Science Fiction Book Club hardcover printing as well. The Magic of Recluce was my first novel with a hardcover printing.

I don’t recall ever buying a hard-cover SF or fantasy novel until I was at least in my fifties, for the simple reason that I couldn’t afford hardcovers, at least not in the quantities in which I bought and read mass market paperbacks.

When I left Washington, D.C., and moved to a MUCH smaller house in New Hampshire, to become a full-time writer, I sold most of those paperbacks, well over two thousand of them because there was no place to put them. For all that, I still have a fondness for the mass market paperback.

Those paperbacks developed two generations of readers and writers, and I’m not so sure that ebooks have the same beneficial effect, even if ebooks are much easier to store. And, somehow, to me, trade paperbacks are a compromise representing higher cost and less convenience, while ebooks lack a certain permanence, given that Amazon can erase everything.

I suppose that makes me a creator of fictional futures and fantasies with his heart anchored in the pulp paperback.

Do real-world nations use a weapon or a tactic just once and then discard it because it’s no longer new or interesting?

Let’s see. Knives and bladed weapons were developed so far back we can’t accurately tell exactly when. They were definitely used as a main weapon for thousands of years and remain in use as personal and professional weapons. Gunpowder is still around (if the latest new and improved version) some two thousand years after its first use. In more modern weapons, the first F-35, the latest fully operational U.S. fighter/interceptor, was delivered twenty years ago, and it’s projected to be in use for another 20 plus years. The B-52 is still going strong after more than sixty years.

People, and presumably aliens as well, will use tactics so long as they’re effective and existing weapons so long as there’s not something better and/or more cost effective. And they may develop new weapons or tactics, provided they’re actually better or not too costly.

Yet, over the years, and slightly more so recently, I’ve gotten comments complaining that protagonists keep using some of the same tactics and magical weapons time and time again. Some also complain that the antagonists’ forces are dumb or slow to change their reaction to the protagonist’s skills and tactics.

Now, I realize that there’s a certain segment of readers who want something new in every book, and I do my best to provide that in terms of political plotting, treachery, who else gets involved in the fighting, and even with protagonists gaining greater mastery of their magical skills and how to apply them.

But… I also know history and culture. Tactics don’t change unless weapons or defenses change, and even then, they tend to change slowly. One reason for slower change in lower tech cultures is that limited communications mean that when one land or leader comes up with something new, other countries have never seen it and refuse to believe what’s happening until it’s too late. There’s also the fact that the military leaders are conservative and don’t like to change tactics, particularly when it requires retraining forces.

The Mongol invasions, Alexander’s use of the phalanx, the rapid conquest of two-thirds of the Mediterranean basin essentially by Islamic culture, the machine gun, the German blitzkrieg, all were examples where those techniques worked well initially because existing armies and cultures were unable or unwilling to adapt quickly.

And, of course, sometimes, brute application of time-tested weapons, along with massive casualties, can surmount smaller forces equipped with limited wonder-weapons. That’s why Alyiakal spends so much time training his forces, because even the most powerful mage of the age is limited and needs disciplined and effective troopers.

I work to maintain a certain realism (strange as that sounds for fantasy) in the way cultures, tactics, and weapons work in human societies, and that means that characters will keep using tactics that work, until they don’t.

Alas… that also means readers will often find Alyiakal and other protagonists using tactics and devices that work time and time again.