Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers

Arguably Heinlein’s last juvenile novel, the story is a shoot-‘em-up. I got lost in the jargon of military organization. I accepted at face value that as a corporal Juan Rico could not be promoted to assistant section leader over his platoon assistant leader, but I still have no idea what that means. Reading Heinlein’s philosophical arguments are the reward for being immersed in his futures. The movie version of Starship Troopers made the case more succinctly and forcefully than the book: When you vote, you call upon the full power of the state to do your bidding; and no one should do that who does not understand what it means. The Socratic dialog in the book that delivered the justifications for requiring military service as a condition of full citizenship was easy to jump in and argue against.

That theorem has a corollary: You cannot vote while you are in uniform. According to Heinlein's philosophy, until you complete your military obligation, you have not earned the right to vote. In real life, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, and George S. Patton refused to vote while serving in the Army. (See "I Fight for Your Right to Vote. But I Won't Do It Myself," by Maj. M. I. Cavanaugh in the New York Times for Oct. 19, 2016 here.)

The minor premise of Heinlein's command doctrine is interesting to consider, and we have come to absorb some of it: everyone who wants to serve has a role. After graduating from Annapolis (1929), Robert A. Heinlein was cashiered from the Navy (1935) for tuberculosis. He recovered and lived a normal active life. Today, although military fitness standards have just gotten tougher, amputees with prosthetics have been returned to active duty, even to combat. 

I saw the movie on disk a couple of years ago, but very many years after reading the book. So, I read it again. I was looking for the story of the senior Rico, Emilio, the hero’s father, who enlisted after Buenos Aires was nuked. Emilio Rico was a corporate CEO from Harvard Law School. But his portrait is a shadowgraph. My intent was to write his story as a project in placing and selling military science fiction stories. “Write what you know” is the basic rule. I know the old man who enlists late in life but the Harvard lawyer is an alien. 

Most of the book delivers Heinlein’s vision of the ideal boot camp. The infantry fighting is out of army field manuals. (Joe Haldeman's Forever War is the better ground battle.) Heinlein served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lexington. Sgt. Juan Rico’s time aboard the Rodger Young is easy to understand and identify with. Write what you know.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Haldeman's "Forever War" (3 of 3)

Ayn Rand and Star Trek 
Documentation is Specification 

The Economic Value in a Liberal Education 

Money as a Crusoe Concept 

The Market is Always Right – About the Market

“Employee Salaries versus Contributions to Society” was a recent poll of 1013 people conducted by CreditLoan dot Com. The survey was not rigorous, but it was not all that bad. At least they had a large number of respondents in their convenience sample. The flaws in the poll reflect common errors in philosophy within our broader culture. 

“Hardly a week goes by where we don't hear about a CEO, professional athlete, or celebrity who's scored a multimillion-dollar salary or bonus. Maybe their talent or skill set is worthy of a hefty paycheck, but considering the small amounts paid to teachers, soldiers, and first responders, it makes us wonder if we are underpaying those who perform outside the spotlight.”  

The survey is long and involved. It ranked eleven occupations:  teachers, scientists, social workers, police officers, military, legislators/elected officials, journalists/reporters, transportation security screeners, artists, clergy, and chief executives. It considered Republicans versus Democrats, Baby Boomers vs. Gen X vs. Millennials. So, it is worth looking at for its detail, again, given some warning about its not being perfectly aligned to the standards of sociology research. They do close with an open explanation of their methodology. For one thing, they grouped occupations so that actors, designers, singers, photographers, writers, and dancers are among the “artists” as are sports figures. Nine kinds of “scientist” are listed, as are four types of “military.” Note that security screeners are considered apart from police and military.

The More You Do for Other People the More You Earn

Survey results here: https://www.creditloan.com/blog/contribution-to-society-vs.-salary

Generally, as the aggregate data shows, the more you do for other people (in their own aggregate estimate), the more you make. That’s how markets work. So, it is erroneous to say that “most people think that teachers are underpaid.”

More to the point, teachers knew the markets before they went to college. They chose teaching anyway.  The same is true of the military. They are not in it for the money—though the money is there if you stop to think about it. 

Occupation	Actual	“Should”
Military	$40,217	$92,033
Farmers/Ranchers	21,076	70,101
Scientists	70,510	109,956
EMT Paramedic	39,675	71,765
Teachers	38,181	70,248

That is one of the problems with this survey. Military people get great healthcare for some ailments such as bullets and burns. Psychological problems have been less well attended. But they get food, clothing, and shelter. On the downside, female Navy officers pay much more than their male colleagues for uniforms. Home mortgages are cheaper; and they can get Basic Allowance for Housing, and Bachelor Officer Quarters subsidy. And housing is determined by cost of living at your home of record. I met a “special forces” kind of guy who was always on the road and whose HOR was Anchorage, Alaska. (Good thinking, Sarge!) After twenty years of military service you can retire and start another career. If you move to another federal agency, you take a lot with you. Even if you go into the private sector, you can cash in on college degrees and other untallied benefits – assuming you live through your employment, a very real untallied cost for many protective services. 

  

And if we could magically triple the pay of teachers or soldiers, what would be the consequences of that? Conversely, if we capped the pay of executives at 60% of this moment’s “average,” would corporations change for the better?

And it is those “averages” that beg so many questions. Granted that “artists” do not make much money on average, Tom Cruise earned $12.5 million for his role in A Few Good Men, which cost $33 million to make. As Deke Slayton said, “Averages only apply to average pilots.” 

Previously on Necessary Facts

Markets Bring Fairness 

Gresham’s Conjecture 

Supplies and Demands 

 2LT Frances Y. Slanger: American Nightingale 

On Saluting the Flag

When I leave home for drill, I am in uniform. I salute the flag when I step outdoors to load my vehicle; and I salute it again before I get into my car and drive off. When I come home, before I leave my vehicle, I put on my cover and I salute the flag before going indoors. Once inside, I change into civilian clothes and stand down the saluting as I unload my vehicle. I do not otherwise acknowledge Old Glory except to unfurl her if the wind has wrapped her around her pole. But what other people do is their own business.

When I joined the Texas State Guard, I took this oath of office: 

“I, MICHAEL MAROTTA , do solemnly swear 

that I will bear true faith and allegiance 

to the State of Texas 

and to the United States of America; 

that I will serve them honestly and faithfully 

against all their enemies whomsoever, 

and

that I will obey the orders 

of the Governor of Texas and the orders

of the officers appointed over me, 

according to the laws, rules and articles 

for the government of the Military Forces of Texas.”

Someone who does not salute the flag of the United States is not (necessarily) an enemy of the USA or Texas. They might be a citizen of Canada. They might have religious, philosophical, or personal reasons of their own. 

Flag salute. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that bowing down to a flag or saluting it, often in conjunction with an anthem, is a religious act that ascribes salvation, not to God, but to the State or to its leaders. (Isaiah 43:11; 1 Corinthians 10:14; 1 John 5:21) One such leader was King Nebuchadnezzar of ancient Babylon. To impress the people with his majesty and religious ardor, this powerful monarch erected a great image and compelled his subjects to bow down to it while music, like an anthem, was being played. However, three Hebrews—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—refused to bow to the image, even on pain of death.—Daniel, chapter 3.  Watchtower Online here 

You can read Billy Gobitis’s letter to the Minersville School Board, at the Library of Congress American Memory here. 

(Penn & Teller burn an American flag. One YouTube video is an out-take from The West Wing in which they burn an American flag in the White House. Penn Jillette gives a great defense. "Did you go to law school?" Josh Lyman asks. "No," Penn replies, "clown school.")

“And then Nate Boyer saw Kaepernick sitting and got mad.  Boyer is a former Green Beret who played football briefly with the Seattle Seahawks, and with the Longhorns at the University of Texas before that. After his initial anger of seeing Kaepernick sitting, he wrote the player a letter, saying he wished Kaepernick would stand up, but that he was willing hear him out about why he was sitting down.

“So I urged him to stand and then take action, because that's really how change will happen, and he said, “No, I'm committed to sitting until I feel that things are changing and that we're moving in the right direction.” And so through that conversation, I guess, we agreed on a middle ground of him taking a knee alongside his teammates.”

On why kneeling was better than sitting

“For me, that's a sign of reverence. You know, people take a knee to say a prayer. And then also, military personnel, it's very common to see an image of a soldier, or a marine, or an airman, or a sailor, take a knee in front of a fallen brother-in-arm's grave to pay respects. So, I just thought it was better, and it showed more about — that he's paying attention as well, he's not, in a sense, sitting it out. He's engaged.” Original NPR All Things Considered story from 17 October 2017 here.  Audio reply of 9 September 2018 ATC broadcast presenting further on the same subject.

This was how my mother learned to salute the flag in the 1930s. The Pledge of Allegiance was crafted by a socialist, Francis Bellamy. He also founded a magazine called The Nationalist. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. 

War is Good for Absolutely Nothin’ 

Love My Rifle More than You 

ANOC: Advanced Non-commissioned Officer Course 

Captain America: the original is still the best

We watched Captain America: The First Avenger the other night. It was my fourth viewing. Yesterday, I brought home Winter Soldier, which I sat through a couple of months ago, and Civil War which I had not seen yet. The first movie continues to hold up well. The second was better than I remembered, but not stellar. The third installment was largely a waste of two-and-a-half hours.  

Serial fiction must identify and cross a boundary that separates the uninformed reader from the true fan. The theory of mythology insists that we know the characters: the warrior, the wanderer, the orphan, the magician… Some heroes are born that way and die still blessed even though fallen or taken down. Siegfried is an easy example. Others struggle their whole lives as did Heracles. When you have a boatload of them, as in The Iliad, Argonautica, and Star Trek, the narrator is under some burden. 

 

Captain America: The First Avenger reviewed here.

If you could travel through history you could take the story of Captain America: the First Avenger to just about any castle or camp. You would need more rhyming couplets to explain how Hydra infiltrated SHIELD. I had to consult the oracles at Google and Wikipedia to put Hawkeye in the Civil War and that was all: he was just a character with some attributes. He has no compelling backstory. Similarly, I know of Ant Man, but never followed him and was unaware that resizing himself and other objects is one of his super powers. (Where does the mass go or come from?) The Scarlet Witch, Vision, Black Widow, Rhodey/Rhodes,... they are just a bunch of people with special powers and could be anyone with any powers. That aspect of the movie was definitely for the true fans. But the same unmet challenge afflicts the Star Trek universe: if you do not know the crew before you see the movie, you are ignorant. On the other hand, for all of its flaws, the continuing Star Wars saga makes use of such disposable characters. 

That photojournalist Peter Parker uncritically accepted Tony Stark’s glib talk about Steve Rogers is disturbing. It would have been even worse if the kid had been approached by a wily Hydra salesman. 

The putative cause of the Civil War is the legalization, licensing, and control of “enhanced individuals,” a theme already developed in the Marvel universe through the X-Men. It was explored by The Watchmen. It even pitted Batman against Superman: “They sent me to bring you in.” “You always were a Boy Scout.” It was cited in Haldeman’s Forever War  (1974), where high-IQ kids were drafted first. The identification, nurturing, and therefore control of the gifted is known in public education from the turn of the previous century with the work of Lewis Terman. (See NecessaryFacts here.) It is an interesting theory, one too close to fact in an era of presidential doublethink and double talk. 

However, the “save the cat” school of screenwriting insists that every twisty turn lead to another twisty turn. In this case, in addition to the United Nations, we have one otherwise ordinary but understandably bitter man, Helmut Zemo. He tricks and overpowers a Hydra psychiatrist. (Hey, your shoe is untied!) On the other hand, Tony Stark has spent his life never finding out why his parents just never made it to the airport, as if they suffered a perpetual flat tire down a dirt road with no farm houses in sight. At least Helmut Zemo put two and two together. 

 Zemo: My father lived outside the city, and I thought we would be safe there. My son was excited. He could see the Iron Man from the car window. I told my wife, “Don't worry. They're fighting in the city. We're miles from harm.” And the dust cleared, and the screaming stopped. It took me two days until I found their bodies. My father still holding my wife and son in his arms... And the Avengers? They went home. I knew I couldn't kill them. More powerful men than me have tried. But if I could get them to kill each other... 

That the loss of innocent lives led to the Sokovia Accords to corral the super beings is no comfort (understandably). But did Spiderman sign them before he joined Ironman's team? As a minor, can he? What about the hundreds of other enhanced individuals? 

The middle story, Winter Soldier, held up better to a second viewing. The cast of characters is manageable. But the eye candy of Ragnarok escalates from cataclysmic conflicts in street traffic to the titanic destruction of three aerial carriers (each about ten times the area of football field or maybe 8000 times the volume of a stadium) that crash into the Potomac River without the inconveniently equivalent displacement of water. And it is the same amount that had to have been sucked into the submerged hangars when they opened to launch the helicarriers. 

The premise of Winter Soldier is purely Cold War. From our point of view, it was easy for Hydra to infiltrate the secret laboratories of the USSR. The Russians probably still feel the same way about us today. Pythagoreans, Freemasons, Jesuits, Dr. No, Thrush, Kaos, Dr. Evil … so many have trod that path that it is a superhighway with rest plazas.  

Captain America: The First Avenger must have its own problems. But they remain much smaller. The Red Skull flies toward New York and Chicago in his Valkyrie, a machine similar to the real XB-70 nuclear bomber of the same name wrecked in a collision on its maiden voyage in 1964. 

The original Captain America is lost to time because his world of 1940 is not ours now. As he said to Sam Wilson at the opening of Winter Soldier: “Well, things aren't so bad. Food's a lot better; we used to boil everything. No polio is good. Internet, so helpful.” But what we understand of him is constant, continuous, immutable. The problem is that he sometimes gets lost in the noise and confusion of computer graphics and franchise licensing. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACT

Superheroes Live in Cities 

The Pretense of Sociology 

Neal Adams at Dragon’s Lair 

Superman: American Alien 

  

Hurricane Harvey

One year ago today, I was into my seventh of 23 straight 12-hour days. I served as the WebEOC communications desk for the Texas State Guard Emergency Operations Center (TEOC). My primary duty was recording to the Position Log every communication I could capture from the operators at three other desks. I also maintained the posted schedule of events (Battle Rhythm). In addition, I answered phones for the Battle NCOIC and the Battle Captain if they were away from their desks. 

Three weeks in and we still looked good.
Easy enough when you are getting fed and
are not waist deep in waste water.

Following the Incident Command Structure (ICS) defined by FEMA, I sat between the operations section and the planning section. Although internally our administrative control was military, we were operationally and tactically serving in response to civil authority.

Nothing happened until and unless a State of Texas Assistance Request (STAR) was filed, approved, and issued. STARs begin with civilian authorities in need of resources. They call the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) State Emergency Operation Center (SOC). If approved, the STAR is passed to a responding agency with authorization.

Texas Maritime Regiment handled water-borne
search-and-rescue and search-and-recovery

The Texas State Guard has three primary missions: evacuating people; staffing shelters; and searching for those in need of rescue or those to be recovered. In addition, we are all trained to be WebEOC operators in order to maintain communications across operations. In reality, that works at the higher echelons of decision making, not in the field.

The Emergency Transportation Network evacuated people
who could not leave the strike zones on their own.

We were awed by the flows of material support from individuals and ad hoc groups. A local Starbucks manager took it upon herself to bring breakfast to the TEOC for days and days. Day after day local restaurants sent over BBQ and soft drinks. 

It was relatively easy to be in the command center. My stresses were from empathy and sympathy as our people in the field used up their rations and their pocket money. The TXSG traditionally is prepared to take care of itself for 72 hours. On the fourth day, our squads, teams, and platoons were in situations no one had planned for. In the three annual hurricane drills I had participated in, the scenario played itself out in 120 hours. Twelve days into Hurricane Harvey, people were ready to go home. Thirty days into Harvey, FEMA declared the emergency over. After 30 days, you no longer have an emergency: you have a state of affairs.

The Israeli Defence Force sent a liaison to find out
how we handle mass emergencies.

Working 12 hours a day does not mean sleeping 12 hours a night. You arrive for shift change briefings and you stay for shift change briefings. You get five hours of sleep, sometimes three. Very soon the rhythm seems natural. So does the intensity of focus. Every fact has to be a necessary truth because every decision matters to someone in a shelter or in a boat who will reap the consequences of your choices. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
AFK: Hurricane Harvey

Volunteering in an Emergency: What to Expect
Armies Without Weapons
Hurricane Tejas 2016

A Critic Meets the Military

Write about what you know. Every student of journalism, fiction, or poetry hears that from our teachers. Carol Burke was already a professor of English at UC Irvine when she wrote Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture (Beacon Press, 2004). That was before she went to Iraq (2008) and Afghanistan (2010). Her experiences probably did not change her from a Democrat into a Republican. She did not become a better writer; her prose is beyond critique—which is why she became a professor of English. But something perhaps ineffable is obvious as a result of her experiences while imbedded with soldiers in a warzone. 

Her book, Camp All-American, is an anti-sexist anti-military diatribe. It was easy to agree with. Her criticisms were more than valid. She was on-target. But others had aced the same firing range. So, like any good marksman, her skill can be credited to her instructors. The problem with Camp All-American is that Burke does not explore the foundations and superstructure of the edifice of sexism. 

The subtitle is "... Changing Military Culture" and it has a double meaning. Sociologists tell a joke: How many sociologists does it take to change a lightbulb? The lightbulb does not need changing; it is society that must be changed. So, Prof. Burke is not chronicling the changes going on at that moment or before or to come, but her intention to change the military to be what she wants it to be. And what she wants is not bad or wrongful. In fact, it is the way the military has been headed since the first female chief petty officer in 1917 (Navy Live blog here).  


Even so, I agree with Burke's major premise: the military treats women differently from men in ways that have nothing to do with the objective requirements of the job. For instance, women are forbidden  from the high-and-tight. Female "short" hair styles must be at least one-quarter inch long. If the rationale of the military were accepted prima facie, every boot would get a buzzcut.  It is just one point among many that are easy to accept yet annoyingly shallow for want of analysis.

Exploitation has three excuses: gender, race, and class. They are braided, though in a particular time and place, one skein may be larger or dyed brighter than the others. Generally, in America, we are classless, sometimes with an unfortunate double meaning. We have been trying hard to get passed race; and, mostly, in the middle of the culture, we have been successful despite the agendas of guilt and hate (also intertwined) from the extremists of the left and right. And the fact is that the military followed baseball in racial integration, ahead of Brown vs. Board of Education and the marches in the south. Racial equality in the services should be a model for gender equality. Burke draws no parallels there.

Sex and gender have genetic roots that define the sociology, economics, and politics of sex and gender. Ultimately, the solution may be epigenetic. When gender enjoys the mobility and mutability of race and class, it will cease to be casus belli—at least for most people, though probably never for the radicals. 

Burke is not alone in her revulsion for the confluence of sex and violence among military men. She accepts it as a perceptual primary. So, she offers no conceptual causes.

She does soft soap Jane Fonda. I did not know that Fonda apologized for her "insensitivity" during the Vietnam war.  Several times. See here and here. But the problem is complicated and Burke does not follow all of the paths of inference. Jane Fonda's tourist visit to an anti-aircraft gun was not a momentary lapse, but a moment within an integrated life. All of her other choices seem to line up pretty well with that. Under the influence of Jane Fonda Ted Turner became a benefactor of the United Nations. 

To say that the military is “conservative” has little to do with the election strategies of Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, except as they, too, reflect, a long, broad, and deep cultural matrix. We accept that military people are in families. To enforce Spartan barracks would seem unnatural (here and now). Yet, about 20,000 to 25,000 military families benefit from food stamps, and other federal family support subsidies. (See Military.com stories here and here.) Every soldier (sailor, airman) knows the cliché: If the Army wanted you to have a family, they would issue you one.

And barracks today are sexually segregated, just as they were separated by race until after World War II—and as they are still separated by class: officers sleep better than enlisteds, even in the very frontiersy Texas State Guard.

Statistical surveys of the military carried out by military leaders (on NecessaryFacts here) reveal an unsurprising geographical bias for the South and the West. The interplay between regional conservatism and military presence is hard to ignore. Per capita enlistments from Massachusetts are not what they were in 1776 or 1861. Only a well-defined liberal elite believes that the military could benefit from the traditional liberal education at university. Most people in America, Democrat and Republican, believe that it is good, right, and proper that the military stands aside, alone, and apart with its own ethical and moral standards.  

Nonetheless, it is paradoxical yet unsurprising that enlisted soldiers (sailors, airmen) are statistically aligned with the country at large. Forty percent feel this way; forty percent want the other thing; and 20% are undecided. Among officers, the story is different. And the higher you go, the farther to the right you drift. The more conservative you become, the better your chances are for promotion. Inevitably, liberals self-select themselves out after the first six to eight years.

So, attitudes about class, race, and gender linger in the highest echelons. Change erupts from below. As non-European non-men inevitably achieved rank and rating military culture changed. But it did not radically alter overnight. Nor could it. To expect that is to wish for the unreal. Yet change does happen. We have no lawful, legal nobility in America. And even in England nobles are now tried before juries of commoners.  Social change happens. But it happens one mind at a time.

I was no stranger to war. In December 2008 and January 2009, for two months before heading off to Afghanistan in 2010, where I served as a cultural advisor to two brigade commanders …

[…] 

We traveled to small villages, to the few remaining schools in the heavily Taliban-influenced district, and to the large local bazaar with its long line of dirt-floored stalls where over a hundred merchants sold farm supplies, veterinary medicines, motorcycles, materials for making I.E.D.’s (improvised explosive devices), drugs intended for the local clinic that had been mysteriously diverted to this makeshift drugstore, boots, plastic pails, decorated metal trunks, CDs that featured what some soldiers referred to as “the latest Taliban Fight songs,” naan, potatoes, raisins, produce in season, and freshly slaughtered lamb.

Rather than improving, security in this area became worse each month. When I had first traveled to the base, we could go twelve kilometers before encountering a tic, short for “troops in contact.” Within nine months, the circle of safety had shrunk to one kilometer.

A soldier in whose vehicle I often rode received a package from his young son, and amid the toiletries, candy and cookies was a five-inch plastic toy. At first, he simply propped the toy on his dashboard to remind him of his son, but after the first firefight from which he safely returned, the figure accrued talismanic meaning, and the soldier turned away the toy that he believed was his protection so that it no longer faced him, but instead looked out the windshield. It was as if, like a charm, it had the power to ward off the enemy’s evil eye.

Many personnel brought small tokens given to them by parents, children, lovers and fellow soldiers. Some were objects of faith —medals, rosaries, prayer beads, angels, crosses, gold and silver lockets with verses of the Quran tucked inside. Others acquired their significance from one’s relation to the giver. Still others accrued meaning along the way. What might be considered minor trinkets back home takes on a new meaning when one ventures into harm’s way. 

(“In the Event of My Death” by Carol Burke here: http://narrative.ly/to-be-read-in-the-event-of-my-death/)

Previously on Necessary Facts

A Few Good Men: A Few Deep Flaws

After Action Report: Heartbreak Ridge

Newton and Leibniz

Fools, Cowards, and Thucydides

Dining Out Ceremony

The Officer Candidate School of the Texas State Guard held a reunion dinner for all classes 2001-2017, last Saturday night, August 18. I was invited as a member of the training cadre because I teach WebEOC for battle captains.

This was a dining out for officers and their cadre, including spouses and significant others. It followed many of the ceremonial details. (See Wikipedia here for "Dining In.") In addition to the formal flourishes - entering of the honored guests; salute to the colors and anthems; chaplain's invocation - the grog bowl symbolized the celebration.

Dry ice goes in last after the rum, whiskey, beer, and more.
The Lieutenant serves to the XO and the Commanding General.
The XO is also the brains, heart, and soul of the OCS.

 That said, we also paused to remember those who were not with us. The details of the special table were explained. When I worked at the VA this past winter, they had a table set up on our floor. That it was highly symbolic was obvious. What it all meant was not.

 

The lemon is for the bitterness of their captivity.
The salt is for our tears.
Rose, ribbon candle, Bible, and all explained here.

We got home safely, watched some TV and went to bed just after midnight. I got up without an alarm at 0500 feeling good. I had slept through the night without interruption. And I woke up without any aches. I was happy. And it was not for myself. 

The Lieutenant was one of the organizers.

I had spent four-and-a-half hours tapping my spoon on the table, being happy for other people. It was a new experience for me. I am pretty much an individualist and my time in the TXSG has been a learning curve. Taking orders, giving a few, working together to accomplish a difficult task, and taking care of civilians in an emergency, that was all predictable. Saturday night was a new experience.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Advanced Non-Commissioned Officer Course

Soldiers of Peace

Volunteering in an Emergency

Securing Your Viper Against Cylons

The Wizard of Oz and the Anti-Intellectual Tradition

“Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through the slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning where men go to become great thinkers. They think deep thoughts with no more brains than you have.”

L. Frank Baum was a serial entrepreneur, a newspaper publisher, a playwright, and theater producer. With The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum intended to create for his children and their friends an American fairy tale. That claim is supported by two biographies, The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was by Martin Gardner and Russell B. Nye, and To Please a Child by Frank Joslyn Baum and Russell P. MacFall. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen are archaic and often gruesome. Baum’s story is filled with the stuff of 19^thcentury America: hot air balloons, colored glasses, and intricate mechanisms. The heroes do not take vengeance on the vanquished. In the next Oz book, women rule the kingdom. A trope used by Aristophanes, it surely reflected the drive for women’s suffrage in Baum’s day. But for all of his cleverness, insight, and intelligence, Baum was not an intellectual. And, to the point here, the successful 1939 cinematic presentation of his story speaks from and to the anti-intellectual tradition.

In the book, rather than a grand ceremony, each of the heroes receives their reward privately. The Wizard removes the Scarecrow’s head and stuffs it with bran, pins, and needles. 

“Hereafter you will be a great man, for I have given you a lot of bran-new brains.” The Scarecrow was both pleased and proud at the fulfillment of his greatest wish, and having thanked Oz warmly, he went back to his friends.

Dorothy looked at him curiously. His head was quite bulged out at the top with brains.

“How do you feel,” she asked.

“I feel wise indeed,” he answered earnestly. “When I get used to my brains, I shall know everything.”

“Why are those needles and pins sticking out of your head?” asked the Tin Woodman.

“That is proof that he is sharp,” remarked the Lion.

In the movie, the Scarecrow is handed a diploma for his Th. D. degree and he says, “The sum of the square roots of two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.” That, of course, is nonsense. But that does not matter. It sounds complicated and it came from a Scarecrow who did not even get fresh bran stuffing. The men at the university (there being no women at university in the common view) have no more brains than the Scarecrow. They only have impressive degrees that empower them to recite silliness. 

Numismatists and economists have probably underscored the real meaning of the Scarecrow's brains by reading in allegories about William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech. Baum clearly took many elements from American culture. He was an active politico, speaking to both Democrat and Republican rallies. The truth may be that as myth, The Wizard of Oz allows us to read our own meanings into its symbols. Whether he intended to lean on the Crime of '73 as he did the use of ipecac and sunglasses is an open question. 

My article on the economic allegory within The Wizard of Oz can be found on the ANA Website Blogs here. That presentation was taken from my article in the Central States Numismatic Society Centinel. I previewed that with a letter to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society E-Sylum here. That was from 2009. But the trend continues, demonstrated by this 2016 report about the opinions of retired economics professor David Denslow in the Gainesville Sun. 

  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

What, if Anything did Dorothy Learn?  

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life 

Captain America 

Money as Living History

Armadillocon 40, Part 1

Once again, we had a great time at Austin’s very literary science fiction convention. They have no filkfest singing, no television stars as guests, and no costume party. Instead, they bring together publishers, editors, writers (past, present, and future), artists, and readers. We spent Friday night through Sunday afternoon attending panel discussions and workshops about the art, science, and craft of speculative fiction, fantasy, and horror. On Saturday, I delivered a presentation, “From Texas to the Moon with John Leonard Riddell” about the first working scientist to publish a science fiction story, here. 

 

David Afsharirad

Although the first sessions began at 2:00 PM, I started Friday at 6:00 o’clock in the evening with readings of flash fiction by David Afsharirad, editor of Annual Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction.He does not write military SF himself, and these three stories were quirky and cute encounters. I then walked the dealer’s room and said hello to people with interesting displays that I would come back to on Saturday.

Socializing is important. So, assuming a long night of literary discussions over drinks, nothing starts early. 

The first panel discussion that I attended on Saturday was on the current state of the Star Trek franchise. The panelists were not screenwriters, or movie reviewers. Only one had published an open Star Trek story though another had an early work published that was "about Commander Data but with a different name."

At 11:00, I sat in on “The Fine Art of Moderating a Panel,” easily, the best presentation at the con. Marguerite Reed moderated. The panelists were Tex Thompson, Patrice Sarath, and Rebecca Schwartz. Reed said that moderating is like being a host at a dinner party. “You are choreographing a conversation,” she said. Bad moderation leads to monopolized conversations, disrespect, and comments instead of questions. Good audience participation requires that you lay down the ground rules as you would with kindergarteners. “We are not here to listen to you. You are here to listen to us.  Questions are not comments. Questions end with a question mark.” Tex said that there comes a time when you have to “pour them a nice tall glass of shut the hell up.” The moderator should know the panelists and develop lines of questions that will draw out their expertise. Keep in mind that the moderator is not the star. Your job is to bring out a variety of viewpoints. I asked for their tips for panelists. Research the topic. “Pop your watch:” time your responses. Know why you are on the panel. Be informative. Take notes before you speak to answer. Do not go rogue. Do not try to moderate. The session closed with suggestions for alternatives to the panel format such as round tables, dinner brigades, and breakfast bars.

Official Opening and Welcome Session Friday 7:00 PM

At Noon on Saturday, I attended a lecture on orbital mechanics, “Rules of the Road for Flying in Space” by Bob Mahoney. Bob tied the physics to the elements of plot with an animated PowerPoint presentation. An orbit is a clock and a ticking clock brings suspense. Limits to motion are the framework for action. Changes in orbit let you change the plot setting. There was much more and I took a page of notes with drawings.

After my talk, I had a few hours to spend in the dealers room. I bought the current volume of Military SF and Adventure. David Afsharirad autographed it and re-inscribed the three that I bought last year. They and about 20 more books from other tables will be going out to a Texas National Guard battalion stationed overseas. We also bought a steampunk necklace for our daughter’s birthday from Vyktohria.

At 5:00 on Saturday, I attended “Cyberpunk: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times,” chaired by T. Eric Bakutis with panelists Lauren C. Teffeau, Christopher Brown, and David L. Yang. It was a good session for me. I enjoyed cyberpunk in its day. For one thing, I was working for Kawasaki Robotics. Closer to now, I continue to read William Gibson’s later works. The subgenre still rings with truth: “The street finds its own uses for things.” Among the many recommendations from the panel was a story about zombie appliances, Ann McDonald’s “The Revolution Will Not be Refrigerated.” The devices in our Internet-of-things can be and have been taken over and used for denial of service attacks. The future is here, even though I never got that blue mohawk I always wanted.  

Cyberpunk Panel

As much as I enjoyed what was offered, I felt that the panel was behind the times, unaware of other real-world instantiations of the fictional projections from the eighties and nineties. Somewhat later, I chatted with another attendee who shared my views, and we exchanged good words about do-it-yourself biopunk in the real here-and-now. 

At six o’clock, I attended “The Fine Art of Writing for Games,” moderated by T. Eric Bakutis, with David Chang, Ari Marmell, and Aaron Orive. It is not a market for me, but I was curious. Writers with book credits get preference. Design is not writing but writing is part of the process. Learn how to script.

Panel discussions, readings, and book signings went on all day ending only at 10:00 PM. But I get up at 4:30... 

Bright and early Sunday morning at 10:00, I rushed to Collecting. The moderator was Scott A. Cupp, with help from Jeremy Brett (curator for SF&F archives at the Cushing Library of Texas A&M) and Troyce Wilson. This was a waste of time and I left halfway through, disappointed by the moderator’s droning monologues about his great purchases. The American Numismatic Association granted me a couple of literary awards and I actively read and write for the Numismatic Bibliomania Society. Back in the 20^thcentury, before being hired as an editor by Coin World, I attended several talks by Clifford Mishler, former president of the ANA and president of Krause Publications. According to Mishler, a true collector, whether of coins, stamps, automobiles, or rock ‘n’ roll vinyl, pursues completeness, condition, rarity, and value. At our conventions, we grade and grant awards to museum-quality displays that demonstrate “the collector’s ethic.” Anyone can buy anything with enough money. What counts is knowing what to pursue and staying on the track. So, I was primed to learn about collecting science fiction books and other memorabilia, but reality took a different course. At 10:30, I joined Science 2018. 

Moderated by John K. Gibbons with panelists C. Stuart Hardwick, Bill Frank, and Bob Mahoney, the session was less informative but more thoughtful. Like the cyberpunks, the panelists seemed not to know as much about today’s science. That was how I met my collocutor on biopunk. However, a running argument between Hardwick and Mahoney gave me a lot to think about then and since. Hardwick said, “We are having a medieval argument about something far in the future that we need to think about now.” He meant morality; and to him, there is no sense in debating right and wrong about something that is going to happen anyway. Mahoney disagreed insisting that if we do not commit wrongful acts, then those possible events will not happen. Hardwick replied that regardless of what we think, someone is going to clone humans (or whatever) and we need to plan for it. Time ran out….  In the Q&A, I asked the panel for their sources and they cited Science News, AAAS emails, and New Scientist. 

I then went to “Learning to Write.” Moderator Marguerite Reed had help from Cassandra Rose Clarke, Trakena Prevost, Emily McKay, and Amanda Downum. They all recommended Save the Cat by Blake Snyder. Clarke suggested getting started by writing fan fic. Several endorsed the Online Writing Workshop well worth the $50 per year. 

“Since 2000, OWW has been helping people become better writers. Our members have made over 1,500 sales to print and online publications, won many awards (including the Hugo), and appeared in Best Of anthologies. Dozens of members have sold novels to major publishers.” --https://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com

A member of the audience cited Scribophile: “The online writing group, writing workshop, and writing community where writers get quality critiques and feedback on your writing.” -- https://www.scribophile.com/

McKay recommended NaNoWriMo, and finding local meet-ups.

After a bit of lunch, I went to Once and Future Military SF at 1300 Hours. 

(Review continues in the post below this.)

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Armadillocon 39 

More on The Forever War 

Forbidden Planet 

Monsters from the Id 

All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights 
Firefly: Fact and Value Aboard Serenity