Sound and fury

I guestimate 95 percent of my Facebook Friends know me as an author of speculative fiction. I'm sure the percentages are reversed with people who know me in person..

I use Facebook as promotional tool for my fiction, and probably most of my Facebook Friends understand the tumultuous storms of controversy that roil the science fiction community. None of my personal friends do, and in fact I've found it very hard to explain to my friends and acquaintances in the "real world" what all the hollering is about, for a few reasons.

East Texas is culturally and politically conservative and traditional. Most people here can't understand the concepts that there are 86 genders or that anyone who believes in Jesus Christ is an idiot*, or that the American people don't have the right - no matter what you think of Donald Trump - to free elections and political self-determination.

America's neo-aristocracy is just as cavalier and out-of-touch as France's "ancien regime". They have all the oppressive power the old French aristocracy had, and unfortunately, because of modern media - social and otherwise - the ability to get in your face with their sneers.

Now, Texans are much more self-reliant and concurrently believe in live and let live. They just don't understand people who think they have the right to tell you how to vote, pray, think - or read.

If people just followed live and let live rule, we'd all be better off, but the aristocrats have been coddled and kow-towed to for so long they don't know any better.

In the writing racket, this comes off in fights over concepts and beliefs that have nothing to do with literature.

I apologize to my friends in the "real world" who are probably very puzzled at what must sometimes seem like petty disputes over minor topics. Trust me, these arguments are as pointless as they seem.There are a lot of privileged and protected people in the rest of the U.S. who have nothing to do but feed their egos and make trouble. Ignore them, as I have learned to do over the past few years.

I often think that I made a mistake by reaching out and seeking to become an author and publishing far afield, because that brings me in contact with these miserable people. But then again, I started writing and submitting stories 15 years ago; I think the social discourse has coarsened considerably since then. The generation that seems to have come up through the ranks of literature since then seem to be made up of equal parts of feral children and Rosemary's Baby.

If you can't treat us with respect, at least leave us alone. Unfortunately, a lot of the people they have oppressed have now turned on them in fear and frustration. It's a vicious circle, spiraling downward.

Like a fever, I hope this eventually breaks. The sooner the better.

* One sign of the social inbreeding in liberal circles is using the mocking name "Jeebus" for the founder of the Christian religion. I've lived in the Bible Belt for 32 years and I've never heard anyone refer to "Jeebus". But it's almost the only way most s-f liberals refer to Christ.

I mean, we don't refer to your deity as the "Debbil", do we?