Leopards that eat faces

There’s a good chance you’ve heard the famous quote by Martin Niemoller, a pastor who supported the Nazis in Germany until he went to the camps himself:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Niemoller is not an admirable man. He didn’t just not speak out, he spoke out in favor of what the Nazis were doing. Then one day, as the saying goes, he found the leopards eating his face. That said, it’s too his credit that he realized in the aftermath how he’d failed as an ethical person. I suspect large numbers of fascists, then and now, would remain convinced they were right to root for the leopards to eat the Jews’ faces or the socialists’ or trade unionist’s faces — it’s only wrong when the leopard eats theirs!

Likewise, if we get the Christian state so many Republicans are eagerly calling for, way too many of my brethren will celebrate when the leopards eat the faces off the Muslims and the Jews. And the atheists. And maybe Mormons and Catholics (some Protestants still don’t think they’re real Christians). But then, inevitably, the leopards will start eating Christian faces. Those who support gay marriage or women’s right or the right of women to leave an abusive husband. Those who don’t vote Republican or support Trump, the white supremacist Messiah. Those who question that the government has the one true interpretation of the Bible. Because dissent equals heresy and Satanism.

Like the Overton Window, the rules for whose faces can get eaten will constantly change. While anti-vaxxers have always been with us, as Fred Clark says, vaccination didn’t use to be controversial. Now, though, it is. Climate change is politically incorrect; lately any sort of energy efficiency efforts are equally grist for the outrage machine.

As JFK once said, we’re safest if we don’t let the leopards eat anybody’s face, if “religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.” Too many people will not learn that until too late.

Books about books

Hence the photos of libraries for illustration.

THE CATALOGUE OF LOST BOOKS: Christopher Columbus, His Son and the Quest to Build the World’s Greatest Library by Edward Wilson-Lee look at how Hernando Colon’s two driving obsessions were shielding his father’s legend from detractors and rivals (which also had the practical effect of shielding the inheritance due to Colon as son of the great explorer) and building a stunning library, beyond almost any private library of the day and including stuff most collectors would dismiss (ballads and other pop-culture items).

This leads to a discussion of how in those pre-Dewey Decimal days a collector could organize a library when it became too big to rely on memory (the title refers to one of Colon’s indexes, listing 1,600 items that sank with the ship delivering them to him). I’d have liked this put in the context of other indexing and filing efforts (I know monastic libraries didn’t rely purely on memory) but still an excellent read.

Printed Legend from detractors (which also had the practical effect of shielding his own financial inheritance) and building a stunning Great Library as a way to turn his bibliophilia into something more (the title refers to 1,600 volumes that went down with the ship delivering them). This leads to a discussion of how in those pre-Dewey days you organize a library too big to remember the contents personally, Colon eventually going with listings by title, author and topic. I do think Wilson-Lee could have put that in the context of similar efforts (I know monastic libraries didn’t rely purely on monks’ memories) but still a fascinating read.

Göttweig Abbey library, Austria

SYRIA’S SECRET LIBRARY: Reading and Redemption in a Town Under Siege by Mike Thomson tells how the comfortable Syrian town of Daraya became the target for government forces during the ongoing (or is it? I’ve lost track) civil war and how rather than struggle just to survive, the townsfolk scavenged books to create their own underground library. While I like the hook, the library is only one element in a depressingly familiar story of death and survival; as that wasn’t what I wanted when I started this, I put it down unfinished.

THE LIBRARY OF THE UNWRITTEN: Hell’s Library #1 by AJ Hackwith starts in the netherworld book depository that holds the stories mortal authors never finished (plus wannabes who never started). Claire, the latest librarian, has the duty to keep the repressed imagination from manifesting physically; when a magical codex turns up capable of overturning the power balance in Hell, Claire’s forced to leave the library and hunt the book alongside her sidekick Muse, a damned spirit and a hero who escaped from one of the books. Of course, it turns out she has no idea what’s really going on … This was a fun fantasy, though I’d have been happy with it as a one-shot rather than a series opener.

Unsurprisingly DARK ARCHIVES: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom reveals that many of the stories of “anthropodermic bibliopegy” are myths. Most supposed anthropodermic books turn out to be bound in pig, calf or the like; there’s no evidence Nazis ever did it (though Rosenbloom admits she wouldn’t be surprised if one turns up someday); and the fifty or so books that do exist are typically obscure volumes of poetry or scholarship than an attempt to pen the Necronomicon.

Unfortunately the material on the books wasn’t apparently enough to build a book around so we get discourses on medical history, rare books and Rosenbloom’s own researches. Still there’s interesting accounts and some discussions about serious questions — if a man binds a book in woman’s skin should we automatically assume misogyny? Would it be more ethical to inter them like human remains? Disappointing overall, though.

#SFWApro. Photos top to bottom by Jorge Royan, Villy Fink Isaksen, and unknown, all public domain or Creative Commons licensing

An avenging angel, Captain Nemo and WW I: movies

The Count of Monte Cristo is a great yarn by Alexander Dumas, though I admit I couldn’t get into the unabridged edition. The 1934 film THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (1934) stars Robert Donat as Edmund Dantes, condemned to life imprisonment by three schemers (one wants his lover Mercedes, one wants his promotion as ship captain, one has political reasons), sent to the inescapable Chateau d’If, and pronounced dead to ensure the bullshit charge will never come to trial.

Decades later, Dantes breaks out of prison, having received a world-class education from a fellow prisoner along with directions to a horde of treasure. Dantes uses the money to establish himself as a nobleman, then comes to France to arrange revenge on his three tormentors.

The movie takes considerable liberties with the book. I can understand giving Dantes a happy ending (Mercedes has never stopped loving him) but there’s a lot of emphasis on Dantes as an agent of justice rather than revenge — he’s not hunting these men down in retaliation but because of the crimes they’re committing against France. Was that some issue with the Production Code? A desire to keep him sympathetic? I’ve no clue. “I have followed your brilliant career with some interest.”

Not having seen the Jules Verne adaptation THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961) since I was a tween, I was disappointed to discover this Ray Harryhausen film has way less kaiju and a lot more Robinsonade material (i.e., desert-island survival a la Robinson Crusoe) than I remembered. A group of Civil War soldiers break out of a Confederate prison by balloon (accompanied by one Southerner—the film formula for a long time was that both sides were valiant and noble, the war was a bad mistake, nothing personal), get caught in a storm and wind up on a Pacific Island. Their struggle to survive is enlivened by occasional giant monsters, pirates, pretty women washing up on the beach and finally an encounter with Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo. This badly needs a stronger cast; Gary Merrill as a cynical war correspondent is good but he needs a strong, idealistic character to play against. Plus the Southerner’s accent is horrendous. “Considering the ships and crews you’ve sent to the bottom, you can’t disturb my conscience.”

It’s weird watching THE ROAD TO GLORY (1936) and realizing that just three years before WW II broke out, they were still making movies about the glory and tragedy of WW I. This Howard Hawks film is impressively dull, cobbled together from bits of The Dawn Patrol (the terrible burden of command in a doomed fight) —

—and Tiger Shark, with burnout commander Warner Baxter and womanizer Fredric March (in a surprisingly weak performance) in love with the same woman. As Films of Howard Hawk puts it, the film starts out with the insight that War is Hell and doesn’t add anything to it. John Barrymore plays Baxter’s father. “You know if one man fails, ten others may die with him.”

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Disorder under heaven (again) but the situation is excellent. Sort of.

Sheesh. This was a week.

We had carefully mapped out our schedule to account for various things — business to take care of Tuesday afternoon, TYG to the dentist Wednesday, housekeepers Thursday, me to my next blood donation Friday morning, then probably resting the rest of the day.

(This is a cicada case. It’s rise-and-mate time with them and man, they are loud. By midweek we could even here them from inside our house).

Tuesday afternoon things went wrong and we had to postpone until today. That meant I had to push back my blood donation until tomorrow, but that won’t work either. And TYG’s dentist had to switch her appointment around which complicated her work schedule. I postponed my blood appointment until tomorrow.

On Wednesday I noticed that while our A/C was set to 70 it was running at 76. Wonderful. When they came out Thursday to check on it, they almost couldn’t find anything but the key glitch kicked in at the last minute (and they say there are no miracles). They performed a temporary fix with a pemanent one next week.

Plus the housekeepers closed the stopper in my sink. It turns out the opening lever is broken so it’s closed until we get the plumber in. I’m not sure if it’s the cleaning crew’s fault or that it was already broken and I never close it.

Astonishingly I got good work done. I went over the final section of Southern Discomfort though I didn’t finish editing it. I got a lot of editing done on Savage Adventures though again, not finishing. And I got another chapter finished on the Let No Man Put Asunder rewrite

I turned in a short Local Reporter article on renovations at a local-government building and two Atomic Junk Shop posts, one about some stories by one of my favorite Silver Age writers, Gardner Fox, and one about the changes in comics and pop culture as the Sixties came to a close.

A frustrating week, but overall a definite win.

#SFWApro. Cover by Gil Kane, all rights to image remain with current holder.

I admit Plushie has looked better

Due to the problems with his eyes and his back this year we haven’t taken him in to be groomed. TYG has done it herself, with my help, to remove matted fur where necessary. He’s kind of looking a mess.

I don’t see “dog groomer” as a viable career aspiration for TYG or me.

However with all the mats removed from his neck and back, it’s easy to see how freakishly long his neck is.

TYG describes him as “a dog put together from a child’s bad drawing.” But he’s still our boy.

#SFWApro.

No, President Biden is not a greater threat to freedom than Donald Trump

Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, then attacked Congress in a coup attempt. Biden has done nothing of the sort. Trump’s openly threatening to repeat the attempt if he doesn’t win in 2024 (there’s also the non-trivial detail his preferred policies are awful). Nevertheless, some people have convinced themselves — or at least they’re trying to convince us — that Biden is the far greater threat.

Journalist Matt Taibbi, for instance, insists that in contrast to Biden’s awesome power as POTUS, Republicans have no authority over anything. Not schools (oh, no?). Not state governments apparently. They’re not censors, Democrats are censors (umm, wrong)! Besides, Democrats are in thrall to the transhumanist ideology, which is a cult and very bad. Curiously, he doesn’t offer any examples of Democrats adopting transhumanism into their policy preferences, probably because they’re as mythical as stories about schools catering to furries. Taibbi also delivers the usual rants about how newsrooms are enslaved to the left. Yes, we’ll just pretend NBC News didn’t want to hire Trumper Republican Ronna McDaniel as an on-air commentator.

Robert F. Kennedy, would-be president, admits Trump attempted a coup but still insists Biden’s a greater threat. One of his staffers, a Republican who dropped Trump for not-being anti-vax enough, says her dream is that RFK takes enough votes from Biden to throw the election to the House, which can deliver the Oval Office to Trump (to be fair Kennedy denounced her views). I find his view as crackpot as his other ideas.

Trump AG Bill Barr just barely came out against his boss’s coup attempt, acknowledges the coup but still says he’ll vote Trump to save us from Biden. Authoritarian Curtis Yarvin has not come out for Trump as far as I know but he does believe we need a dictator in the White House to save us from left-wing dictatorship.

A New York Times guest columnist argues Trump isn’t an authoritarian thug, he’s an outlaw hero challenging the status quo (slightly off-topic, I love this delicious take down of national columnists).

I think this river of bullshit has several tributaries. First, some people straight up lie. Second, political paranoia is a common feature in American culture, particularly on the right. Third there’s Wilhoit’s Law, which defines conservatism as the belief the law protects Us and does not restrain Us, while it restrains Them but does not protect Them. Kennedy, for example (I don’t have the link handy) has said he’ll put pressure on science journals that don’t publish anti-vax articles. That sounds like the kind of censorship he decries but I assume he’ll say forcing publication is fighting the real censorship. It isn’t. Kennedy chooses not to understand how science works. And as I said Monday, pushing back against facts drains energy from your opponents and sometimes shifts the Overton window.

Yarvin, for his part, is PO’d that people he considers his inferiors have the same say in government he does. All men are not created equal — the system needs to recognize that! It reminds me of the right’s resentment of elites, except Yarvin wants to replace the current elites with rulers more like himself.

Finally a lot of the ranting about left-wing dictatorship is a refusal to believe liberals are right. On a lot of points we are: women deserve equal rights with men, gays don’t deserve to be criminalized, blacks are equal to whites, America is not a Christian nation, vaccines work, evolution is true and global warming is real. By and large society has accepted a lot of these points, which translates into “left wingers control everything!” And conservatives who disagree get criticized, which is no different than turning them over to the Inquisition! Conservatives who are anti-anti-racist or anti-anti-misogynist are edgy rebels speaking the truth to power.

None of that right-wing nonsense changes the facts: Trump is a fascist thug and some of his supporters are equally bad. And perhaps the last reason: people who know they want to impose a dictatorship assume everyone else does.

This week’s cover post

First, one by William Timmins

I like this Rudolph Belarski cover so much I bought the book on Kindle.

Charles Beaumont deserves to be better remembered than he is. Cover art is uncredited.

Finally this colorfully strange cover by Paul Lehr.

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Fighting: what’s the point?

As I mentioned last week, Chapter Three of Let No Man Put Asunder has a big fight scene. I spent several hours improving it (I hope) with the help of the book Fight Write. The book encourages asking multiple questions so you know where the fight has to end an how to get there.

First, what’s the point of the fight? What do I want the outcome to be? And what do the characters want?

Earlier in the night, protagonists Mandy and Paul were attacked by two magical adversaries, Grainge and Mountebank, who attempted to kidnap them. Escaping, they recuperate at Mandy’s home, hopeful they haven’t been followed, and try to make sense of things. Trouble shows up in the form of two rival kidnappers: Celathion, an elf riding a small dragon, and Peacock, a flamboyantly dressed martial artist.

My goal: Mandy and Paul stave off the kidnapping until the cops arrive. They fight with the new abilities they’ve gained (Paul is apparently psionic, Mandy’s suddenly a kick-ass fighter) and discover more of their scope. And they lose. Their adversaries are seasoned professionals. Mandy and Paul do learn a little more about what they’re up against. The police find all these goings-on highly suspicious.

Character goals? Paul and Mandy want to avoid capture. The two kidnappers need the opposite, plus they have to take each other down.

The Setting. How does this affect the fight?

I thought I’d done a good job with that. We have Mandy hurling an ashtray full of butts into someone’s face, Paul throwing a pile of Reader’s Digest at his opponent, people vaulting up and onto the banisters. But when I thought about the who and the where I realized Mandy’s not going to let Celathion in. She shoves the couch in front of the door with Paul’s help, then talks to Celathion through the window. It’s a minor thing but it’s a much more sensible tactic.

It also slowed things down long enough for Mandy and Paul to have an initial first round with Peacock. That changed the pacing for the better.

It’ll be a while before I can get anyone to beta read it but I’m pleased with the improvements.

#SFWApro. Art by Jack Kirby (t) and Carmine Infantino, all rights to images remain with current holders.

Shifting Overton’s window

As y’all may know, Overton’s window refers to the boundaries of acceptable discussion. What’s inside Overton’s window represents mainstream, normal political discourse; what’s outside it isn’t. Overton’s window allows Republicans to talk about how they want to end gay marriage and criminalize gay sex again; while some of them occasionally joke about executing gays, it’s too far outside the window for most of them to support (for the record, I don’t think they’re joking).

Conversely, one of the problems feminism has long faced is that “women should have full equality” is treated as almost outside the Overton window, the polar opposite to “men should have all the power.” Obviously as the truth lies closer to the center, that means women should have some rights but maybe not 100 percent equality, right? Wrong: equality (as opposed to reverse-patriarchy with women running the show) is the centrist position.

All of which ties in to what I was talking about last week, not letting Republicans normalize their policies. Sure, a large part of the forced-birth movement has always opposed exceptions for rape victims or tonallowing abortion if the fetus will be born dead. In the past decade though, they’ve been more blatant about saying so. Whether it’s Trump giving them the delusion they’re getting “their” country back again or Dobbs making them feel more confident, I don’t know. But the more they say it, the more openly other people will say it. The window shifts.

Let’s be clear. An ex-president who attempts a coup is not normal, nor acceptable. A presidential candidate who vows he’ll only be a dictator on Day One and who brags openly about grabbing women by the you-know-what is not normal (nor acceptable), no matter what Justice Sam Alito thinks. Having the White House blow off rape accusations against a Supreme Court nominee is not acceptable nor normal. Claims that Trump’s attempted coup was perfectly legal aren’t normal or acceptable. Republican calls to prosecute their political enemies are neither — and despite their lies, no, Trump’s trials are nothing of the sort.

Siding with Putin’s war of conquest isn’t acceptable or normal. I could go on, but you get the point. We mustn’t let them redraw the Overton boundaries. When they say everything’s perfectly normal and not a big deal, we have to speak out. Which is what I try to do here.

The Code Switch newsletter discusses a related topic, the way bigots and racists — and, I’d argue, misogynists — keep raising the same questions over and over. Do black people really have it harder? Didn’t slavery have some positive aspects? Don’t rape victims bear some responsibility for their actions (spoiler: no!)? Alternatively they just flat-out deny the truth, like Holocaust deniers insisting there’s no evidence Jews were massacred (yes, they were). Or right-wing misogynist William Wolfe insisting there’s no systemic rape issues or cover-up in the Southern Baptist Conference (he’s lying).

In the words of Code Switch: “the great Toni Morrison once said that “the very serious function of racism is distraction.” Lots of brilliant, capable people wind up wasting their time trying to prove that racism is real instead of, you know, solving the climate crisis.

So, some humble advice from someone who’s spent the last 15 years studying the dynamics of racism: Don’t get thrown off by the smoke and mirrors. Instead, when someone says they’re “just asking questions,” think long and hard about whether those questions ever needed answering to begin with.”

Ditto misogyny and rape apology. And homophobia. And … well, you get the picture.

You can find more about misogynist lies in Undead Sexist Cliches, available in ebook or paperback. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with me.

A French vacation, a Hyperborean and more: graphic novels read

FRENCH MILK by Lucy Knisley is a nonfiction graphic novel about the author’s visit to France as a young woman, along with her mother. The daily accounts of what she ate, which museums she went to, how she’s feeling and whether she gave in and smoked feel like she rewrote her blog posts and added some crude sketches. I do not mean that as a compliment.

MISS TRUESDALE AND THE FALL OF HYPERBOREA by Mike Mignola and Jesse Lonergan is one of the weakest entries in the Hellboy universe. In the late 1800s, Miss Truesdale, one of the rare female members of the Heliotropic Brotherhood, finds herself plunging back into her first incarnation as a female gladiator in ancient Hyperborea. This feels like it’s seeding for future adventures but by itself it’s too slight to work. Despite which I will be adding it to the Hellboy Chronology soon.

MARVELS: SNAPSHOTS is a collection of stories edited by Kurt Busiek and in the vein of his Marvels, and Marvels: Eye of the Camera, looking at the MU through the eyes of ordinary people. A couple of petty hoods discover they’re out of their depth in the age of supervillains. A reporter discovers what Johnny Storm’s graduating class really think of him. A cop and a paramedic fall in love during a late-Bronze Age Avengers adventure. The stories don’t all work but the vast majority do.

#SFWApro. Cover by Lonergan (top) and Alex Ross, all rights to images remain with current holders.