thebardingreen

I know, he's always been one of those conservative old men writing for teenage boys. That's been true since the 80s. But his themes on a number of subjects got just enough more progressive as time went on, and I was able to stomach his writing. I always pegged him as a centerist who moved VERY GRADUALLY leftward over the decades and mostly wasn't interested in making political points in his books. Though he clearly had regressive opinions about women in the military for a long time, especially when that was a big part of the cultural zeitgeist in the 90s, those even eased in recent decades.

On the subject of abortion, he wrote an impressively nuanced short story back in the 90s about abortion and telepathy. Specifically, about a telepathic scientist caught between pro life and pro choice political blocks trying to use telepathy in an objective way to answer the question of how human fetuses were at different stages of development. While the results initially seemed to favor the pro life crowd, at the end it's revealed that the story is more about the observer effect and that rather than reading the minds of unborn children, he was reading his own mind reflected back to him by developing brains unable to process the telepathic contact.

So I was surprised by just how moralistic and aggressively pro life Judgement at Proteus (the latest installment of the Quadrail series) was.

A major plot point in the book is that a teenage girl, pregnant through SA, turns out to have a

At multiple points in the story, the health of the fetus comes up and multiple characters go out of their way to say things like "all sentient life is sacred." The main characters express agreement with this sentiment, even while bringing up that on some parts of Earth, it would be legal to abort the fetus. The aliens running the hospital space habitat they're on shut that down quite aggressively.

The girl herself, who is shitty and antisocial to everyone to the point that she loses believably as a character, is shown to want her rape baby to live (at least until the truth about it's conception is revealed) in a way that makes her even MORE unbelievable as a real person (I've done a lot of professional work in my life with teenagers and I just don't buy it).

But then when she DOES change her mind about wanting to keep the baby she risks her life

This is the most believable part of the story (and where I threw the book down due to the toxic bullshit) because:

• A teen girl nearly kills herself doing something dangerous because she doesn't think (with good reason) that the adults around her will support her in getting an abortion? 100% believable.

• The main character initially thinks she's trying to kill herself and calls it "murder." When he figured out what she was actually trying to do, he puts it that "she wasn't the intended victim."

• A female character, shown to be in a supportive role toward the girl, expresses she can't understand why. The male character mansplains to her "put yourself in her shoes, you might feel the same way!" And she passionately rejects that she would not. Yeah, a woman thinks about being a teen girl, pregnant through assault, discovering she's carrying an alien cuckoo baby, "doesn't understand why the girl would want to kill her child??" In fact, she needs a man to explain this to her? Bullshit! Also, r/menwritingwomen. Pro tip: Would have been MUCH more believable if you'd written the same dialog the other way around.

• The male character then councils the woman that their job is to "be the girl's friend and help her understand how it's the fault of the people who did it to her and not the fault of her unborn child."

And that's the point where I threw the book down. And realized I'm probably done with yet another author teen me loved who adult me just sees more clearly.

But I worry for the teen boys who ARE still totally reading this author (and other military adventure scifi by conservative old men sneaking their political agenda into it). Given his association with Star Wars, he's STILL a pretty big draw for the teen boy demographic and his latest books are clearly still aimed straight at them, where these ideas can go percolate with all the toxic shit they absorb from the Man-o-Sphere on Tik Tok and Youtube.

Damn! Just had to get all that off my chest.

No spoilers for Season 2 other than the magic is back and go watch it.

It's so good it makes other Star Wars almost unwatchable by comparison.

I'm also really inspired to go fight some fascism and blast some ~~space~~ Nazis.

Title says it all. I'd like to host my own instead of sharing mine and everybody else's schedule with some techbros.

"They are not being talked to like they are children. We are helping them understand why their strategy is a bad idea," the source said.

Fuuuuuuuck you!

Said a second House Democrat who spoke anonymously: "It doesn't surprise me leadership is very upset. They gave specific instructions not to do that."

Fuuuuuuck you!

This really tracks for me. I grew up around wealthy liberals and am intimately familiar with how these motherfuckers think. I have been telling my friends for months that we cannot expect the Democratic establishment or our current batch of elected Democratic representatives to address the problem.

• People are like "Don't they understand that it's a war?"
• Most of these people think we're idiots for thinking of it as war.
• Their high spending donors think we're idiots for thinking of it as a war.
• They think Republicans are angry idiots who have to be negotiated with so we can "get on with business."
• They see Republican voters MAGAing and rioting on Jan 6th and they think "What a bunch of yahoos!" (my multimillionaire boomer dad's literal words).
• They see Leftist protests turning out en-masse and they think "What a bunch of yahoos!" (again, my multimillionaire boomer dad's literal words).

My father has literally said about the second Trump presidency.

• "This will all blow over."
• "You just watch, the system will slow all of this down."

See, it's not just our "elected dems in office," who don't seem to get it, it's the entire leftish / center leaning, privileged ass, rich ass, mostly white, mostly older demographic, all comfy with their owning of multiple homes and their inflated stock portfolios and their rubbing shoulders with billionaires. We complain about the "elected dems in office," because we see them out there being like this in public, in the news in front of everybody. But this whole demographic is like this and that's why we keep seeing it.

EDIT:

The only way we'll change this is to STOP ELECTING DEMS FROM THAT DEMOGRAPHIC. They're not "spineless cowards," they just DON'T ACTUALLY REPRESENT YOU. They represent other neolibral rich people (people just like them, in other words). Those people's highest values are

• Stability.
• Business Economics (the price of gas and eggs doesn't really effect them that much).
• Maintaining their comfy "compassionate upper class" culture.

They DO genuinely care about

• Philanthropy (usually of a sort of egocentric variety).
• Social safety nets (most of them genuinely value compassion especially when it doesn't really cost them anything).
• Sound fiscal policy.
• Science (they believe in climate change and worry about their children and grandchildren).
• They LOVE to reassure and prop themselves up by talking about all the good they're able to do because they're rich / influential.
• On that note, they tend to embrace a kind of leftist, New Agey take on Prosperity Gospel and see wealth as something that enables them to do good in the world and help people (See? Greed is GOOD!). Some of that has merit, but it is NOT nearly as true as they tell themselves and others it is.

Faced with chaos and instability they will

• Try to negotiate with the people causing it, to get things "back to normal."
• Compromise with those people to keep things as stable as possible Every. Fucking. Time.
• Run off to meditation retreats and vacation homes and time shares in Hawaii or ritzy parts of Mexico to "find their center."
• Abandon their higher values to circle the wagons around the first, basic three (Stability, Business, Culture).

Importantly,

• They DO NOT see you as being "like them," "their people," or "part of their culture." They're actually VERY aware that you are NOT part of their culture.
• They usually honestly think that that's because they made better choices than you. They ARE able to acknowledge that there are people less fortunate then them, and even that they may have an obligation to these people. But they don't think they OWE you anything.
• When I say culture, I'm not talking about your Italian heritage, your black southern cuisine or how you abuela only speaks Spanish. I'm talking about private school / charter jets / fundraiser dinners / owning a mint condition classic car / keeping your boat in the garage of the OTHER house you own on the same street as your primary home.
• They do not feel obligated to go out of their way to defend your culture. Although if your culture is artistic, entrepreneurial, agitates for social justice, or is tangential to their own religious beliefs (looking at you Buddhism), they might be willing to fund it.
• They DEFINITELY feel entitled to exploit or profit off your culture, if they see an opportunity to do so, and will pat themselves on the back for "the good they're doing in the world" and "how they were able to help people" the WHOLE WAY TO THE BANK.
• This doesn't mean they're bad people or lack compassion for you.

When we're asking our congressmonsters to fight, we're asking them to take up our values in ways that many of them (rightly or wrongly) see as abandoning their own core values. THAT'S why they're angry.

They're NOT cowards. They just don't actually value the same things you do and their core priorities aren't in the same place yours are. They never have been. And as long as we primarily elect Dems from this demographic, they NEVER will be.