Tag: Current Events

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On the Substacky Thing and My Absence in 2024

When I started my Substacky thing a year ago, I had big ideas and no expectations. It was wonderful.

Things didn’t really go as I’d hoped, and that seems to have been a main theme of 2024. As a result, I haven’t sent a Substacky thing in a while. I do apologize.

Though 2024 began as a year of potential and promise, I had to take some time away from the fiction writing game. My sabbatical turned out to be longer than I would have liked. I delayed this Substacky thing further because, when it was clear I was away long enough that I was going to have to restart the thing, I wanted to have something prepared to address it all. I wanted to write about the endless rejection we writers face and how to deal with it. I wanted to write about how the whole universe seems to discourage you from doing the thing you love and were born to do and how to fight against that. I wanted to write about the spiraling depression that comes when you begin to realize you can’t. I wanted to write about the devastating blow America took right in the nuts last month. And, I wanted to do it all in a way that would be useful. The last thing I want to do in any space is whine. I don’t totally lack perspective. I know millions of people have it much worse than me.

But that’s sort of the point, isn’t it?

I’m getting off track again. I’ve been getting off track a lot lately. Please forgive me. I’m getting old, but I think it’s more attributable to these turbulent times and how utterly confounding they can be for writers. I’ve seen many of my peers write about how to write during times like these, and I simply haven’t been able to. There’s your holiday 2024 update. The end.

I’ve been playing the fiction writing game long enough to have learned I can’t write during times of great change. I’ve also learned I can’t write during times of sadness and grief and darkness. So much of my writing is about precisely those things, so when I’m experiencing them, I need to experience them. Writing about them is for later. For me, 2024 was a year of great change and a year of grief.

Apologies for being cryptic. I hate it when people are cryptic. It’s like, do you want me to know what’s bothering you or not? In this case, I want you to know some things were bothering me and preventing me from writing, and let’s leave it at that.

Maybe you noticed I wasn’t sending my Substacky things out, and maybe you didn’t. If you follow me on social media, maybe you noticed I haven’t been there either, and maybe you didn’t. I’ve been keeping to myself a lot this year because I’ve needed that. I haven’t sent a Substacky thing because I needed to not do that.

New Year’s is a double-edged sword for me this time. In one sense, I’m looking forward to the restart, hoping 2025 is the later when I’ll be able to write about the change and grief of 2024. However, I’m also wont to say I’m afraid of the future, so I write about it and hope I’m wrong. I think the future looks dark, indeed, especially so for many vulnerable people, but I hope I’m wrong.

As the future of my Substacky thing goes, I’m evaluating that. 2024 was supposed to be a trial run of sorts. I wanted to send one useful piece out each month and see where that took me, but I couldn’t follow through. For a fiction writer these days, being able to send emails to readers is a fundamental need, and Substack is, I think, the only free option (fiction writers don’t make any money) that is also practical, but I’m not sure what I’m doing here is working. I’ll be thinking about adjustments for next year, so stay tuned. 

I won’t say ‘farewell.’ I’ll say ‘more to come.’

While the future of Dark Matters (I won’t write “Substacky thing” again, promise) is uncertain, you can count on me continuing to write. I simply cannot not write. Maybe throw some good juju my way that something pans out and a door opens. If that happens, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I hope you have an amazing holiday season and happy new year!

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I was, like, only 100 feet away from Obama and Merkel last night, and I’m now enlightened

President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sit on a stage at the Anthem in Washington, D.C., discussing Merkel's new book, German and American history, and current events.

I got to see President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in conversation last night in DC, and I want to share some thoughts I took away.

Be generous with your curiosity.

Obama and Merkel discussed at length the parallels between Germany’s divisions (literally, in the case of the Berlin Wall, which Merkel grew up on the eastern side of) and America’s. We’re in a time of great division across many lines, but in Merkel’s experience where her country was cleaved in two and then put back together, she found earnest curiosity for the experiences of people who have lived very different lives is the key to understanding and unity. Obama iterated on that idea with regard to the United States where we’re divided across race, class, religion, region, urban vs. rural, and so much more. They both agreed curiosity is the first ingredient in unity, and while it’s very difficult in the face of indifference and hostility, and especially so when it isn’t reciprocated, it’s necessary for good faith public discourse.

Freedom is a responsibility.

This one was more Merkel, but while the sentiment might feel familiar to us, I think it’s somewhat more complex. Merkel said people in democracies tend to interpret their freedom as the ability to do whatever they want, but she said, having lived in a dictatorship and then having effectively led the free world (my words, not hers, but she did), her perspective of freedom is a bit different than ours. She actually said living in a dictatorship wasn’t all that bad. She had a happy childhood, and she and her family had a decent life. However, with the state providing so much to and demanding so much from her, she noticed a void when that authority was gone. Freedom, to her, is the responsibility to build a decent society in the absence of an authoritarian state doing it for you. Freedom, she said, is a responsibility because, if you don’t tend to and nurture it, if you don’t help keep your society thriving, people will lose faith in it, and when people lose faith in their society, that’s when they invite dictators and authoritarians to come and relieve them of the responsibility of fixing their own problems using the systems and resources they have available to them.

The antidote for despair is action.

This one is classic Obama, but Merkel was on board in her own way. Obama said, when he was in office, he would tell his staff, “better is good.” He hinted at the nirvana fallacy in which people tend to despair and reject a solution if it isn’t perfect. Merkel added that, sometimes, when you want to solve a problem, it can be discouraging to find the answer is more difficult and less effective than you expected. They both suggested that, even if we can push toward an ideal solution slightly, improvements are good work. Sometimes, they said, a massive challenge with dire implications, such as climate change—which is stressing global economies and pushing migrants and asylum seekers away from the equator around the world, making it more difficult for people to enjoy the freedoms they may take for granted, and is only getting worse and tempting an invitation for an authoritarian or dictator to solve those problems—can all seem desperate but, with action, maybe we can make something better, and better is good.

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Why This Election Hurts

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about presidents in the stories we tell. I love what I do because I get to create pieces of art that, with any luck, could become a reference point for someone to make sense of our world. Cultural touchstones in art are important because they reinforce or illuminate our cultural and social values, and we can use them for growth, to chart a path forward, or to find it again when we’ve lost our way.

One of the things I love about stories is we can look at a protagonist, acknowledge their flaws, and root for them to use their strengths to defeat the antagonist. More than that, the heroes we cast in our stories reveal the ideals we hold for our own values. We recognize them as the good guys not because we’re told they’re the good guys but because we see the good in them. We can examine the aspects that make them protagonists or heroes, and we can see in them a kind of reflection of that which we hold to be good. 

We can look to President Whitmore played by Bill Pullman in Independence Day to give us hope in the darkest of times when all seems hopeless and lost. We can look to President Beck played by Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact to help us face the worst fate imaginable and to do it all with that voice that makes us feel wise and like everything is going to be okay. We can look to Dave Kovic played by Kevin Kline in Dave to cut through the bullshit, make us laugh, and remind us what’s most important: love. We can look to President Bartlett played by Martin Sheen in West Wing to demonstrate that prime patriotic quality of putting duty and country above all else, even politics. (I’m aware there aren’t really any great woman presidents in popular American culture to cite here, and I think that’s kind of a point worth making, so I’m leaving this list as is.)

In reality, our presidents aren’t like our idealized heroes. I know that. As many idealized presidents as we have in our storytelling, we seem to have more examples of presidents who represent our resentment of politics, and that points to a reality, too. Regardless, I think we should hold our real presidents to those ideals and values, because those ideals and values? They’re real. They’re the truth in the fiction.

The neat thing about storytelling in any culture is the audience has to mostly agree for the magic to work. The audience has to feel the hero is the hero, so we can look to stories to understand what a culture values.

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Not OK, Computer

Image by Marvel Studios and potentially every artist on the planet; it’s impossible to know for sure. Also, none of them were paid or even acknowledged for their work.

Artistry is one of humanity’s defining traits. Our creative ingenuity makes us special.

So I find it strange that, with the emergence of AI, we’re not using it to make our lives better but to automate creativity.

I won’t be watching Secret Invasion. If you haven’t heard, Disney—the most powerful and profitable entertainment studio the world has ever known—opted to exploit AI, plagiarize real artists, and save a few bucks to generate the show’s opening credits sequence. They claim the method fits the show’s themes.

It’s a story about spies fighting shapeshifting aliens.

It’s a shame because many real artists did work on the series, and I’m sure it’s great. My hope is Disney, Marvel, Method Studios, and the show’s producers change course, hire actual artists to create a new opening credits sequence, and commit to never using AI-generated creative content again.

Let’s leverage AI to do the work nobody wants to do, and let’s empower people to do the work they actually want to do, especially if that work explores human creativity in any form.

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Re-Reading The Handmaid’s Tale, a Review

At the end of 2018, I re-read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. After 15 years (and this time picking it up because I wanted to, not because I needed to for a class), I found it extraordinarily powerful and prescient. I then wrote this review but never posted it. Oops. I figured I’d post it now with some edits because these thoughts weren’t doing anyone any good sitting on my hard drive.

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Demagogues

I’ve been thinking and reading about demagogues a lot this summer. Demagogues are political leaders who appeal through pathos rather than logos. For the non-Greek, feelings rather than logic. Most commonly, demagogues manipulate our fear and anger, and they generally direct those emotions at an other or a “them.” Demagogues require opponents as scapegoats. They require division.

We’ve seen their kind many times throughout history, yet I’m optimistic about them. For every one that has risen to power, I like to think many failed to gain any traction. Recognizing them is simple, something I expect any American should be able to do instinctually, yet if you find yourself caught by their influence, it may all seem a bit vexing and complicated. That’s because some of what they’re saying, on some level, makes sense and is, on some level, true. They require reality distorted.

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On ‘Salute to America’ and Questionable-at-Best Leadership

Despite his country continuing to face a historic pandemic and unaddressed racial tensions, Trump is proceeding with his “Salute to America” celebration tomorrow, and that tracks, considering the kind of questionable leadership he has exhibited not only throughout these crises but also throughout his term.

While I’m seeing talk about how much the event is costing us and the wisdom of holding such an event right now, I’m wondering why more people aren’t more outraged about the principle that he’s once again co-opted our most sacrosanct holiday for personal and political gain. Independence Day used to be a day of unity for all of us to set aside our differences and come together to celebrate the best ideals of America, but Trump has turned it into a divisive campaign rally to highlight the worst of America at our expense. Regardless of politics, this should set off even the most adamantly self-proclaimed patriots among us.

It’s not right, and it’s just one more of the countless reasons you shouldn’t vote for him in November. Of course, it is far less compelling of a reason than the thousands of Americans who have died from Covid-19 due to his poor leadership; his woefully inadequate response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the far too many others, and the social movements clamoring for change; and the countless other indicators of his ineptitude and harm; but I digress.

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One Sentence About This State of Emergency

After two years of holding partisan control of the federal government during which border security was not an emergency, a president the American people don’t want is declaring a state of emergency that doesn’t exist to build a wasteful and ineffective wall the American people don’t want, by taking money from the military’s tax-funded budget, not Mexico as he promised, and to satisfy prejudices and assuage fears he helped create with lies and demagoguery, thus sidestepping democracy and invoking autocracy in the country that used to be the leader of the free world where self-proclaimed patriots and champions of liberty used to criticize a black president for using the power of executive order and now are celebrating victory for getting nothing their country wants or needs, because one failed businessman turned celebrity exploits the popular scorn of modern American politics to convince them he knows best and reinforces that belief with propaganda, confirmation bias, and the cognitive dissonance of a generation that stripped future generations of their prosperity and is losing its grasp on the modern world.

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America’s Identity Crisis and Its Need for Liberalism

I didn’t bother watching the state of the union address this week. I figured that, as long as Trump stuck to the speech he didn’t write, stumbled through nine out of ten words correctly, and didn’t wet himself at the dais, he’d be forgiven the falsehoods and misleading statements, and it appears I was more or less right about that.

I did watch Joe Kennedy’s rebuttal speech, and I found it eloquently expressed an idea that’s been weighing on liberal America these last 18 months or so since the GOP nominated a guy who was not only unqualified and unfit to lead its party, but also a desecration to it.

“Constitutional crisis” has been buzzing around recently because Congress made about as unanimous of a decision as it can (517-5) to impose sanctions on Russia for what our intelligence community is in consensus was an attack on American democracy, but of course, the Trump administration is refusing to enforce those sanctions because he’s a traitor (probably) and democracy is dying and the GOP doesn’t care as long as they win, because party over country, and …

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Hey, Charlottesville

Hey, Charlottesville. I hear you’re having a bad day. I know you pretty well, and I want you to know that, though the world is looking at you today and normally is content to ignore you, I know you’re a friendly, small city in one of the most beautiful regions of the United States, and you’re a beacon of culture, art, and enlightenment, and you’re trying to be a good home for a lot of different people with different stories and different ideas.

And that’s not an easy thing to do.

Much of that is why some of the worst of humanity is there today. You see, they don’t like you. They want to hurt you. They aren’t content to be a part of something great. To them, it is not great unless they dominate it.

But I want you to know that I know they are not you. I know that, today, this is not you at your worst. Today is us at our worst, and it just so happens to have found its way to you.

I’m really sorry about that and wish I could do something. Today, all I can really do is watch to make sure you make it through all right, and when you do, I want you to know I still love you.