16 thoughts on “The Current Politicocultural DIsaster”

  1. 2020 made me think of Heinlein’s “The Year of the Jackpot”, which I see is now online at https://bit.ly/3t0ZDaG

    That edition of Galaxy also includes the conclusion of Alfred Bester’s “The Demolished Man” and a column about asteroids and moons from Willy Ley.

    Before lamenting that they don’t make SF magazines like they used to I figured I ought to glance at the latest Analog. The fiction looks uninspiring but John Cramer’s column is about “Rejuvenation and the DNA Methylation Clock”. I remember Rand mentioning some of this work. Faster please, lest the Millenials inherit the Earth. https://www.analogsf.com/current-issue/the-alternate-view/

    1. “It means that when an epidemic is due, it happens, despite all the public health efforts. It means we’re lemmings.”

      I wonder if Heinlein ever encountered the words “wet market”.

  2. “The fiction looks uninspiring but John Cramer’s column is about “Rejuvenation and the DNA Methylation Clock”

    Thx for the post. I used to subscribe to Analog some years back and for many years but gradually fell away from it. Would have to admit I agree with your assessment of the quality of the fiction, but miss the fact articles (especially by John G. Cramer) more.

  3. John G. Cramer wrote a pretty good SF novel about 25 years ago “Einstein’s Bridge”.

    I too used to buy Analog every month but fell away about 25 years ago.

      1. I was in hog heaven when a friend of my father gave me 4 years worth of Analog that he’d accumulated while stationed in Pensacola, along with an assortment of novels suitable for a 10-year old. Mostly Heinlein, but a few other authors. I gave up on Analog about 25 years ago. I stuck with Scientific American a little longer, but the value there disappeared about the same time.

  4. Not just Starship Troopers…all of the Blessed Robert Anson Heinlein’s (PBUH) Crazy Years….

  5. Some of the “selected headlines from 1969” from the first chapter of Methuselah’s Children:

    Court Orders Statehouse Sold
    Colorado Supreme Bench Rule State Old Age Pension Has First Lien All State Property
    N.Y. Youth Meet Demands Upper Limit on Franchise
    Carolina Congressman Cops Beauty Crown
    “Available for draft for President” she announces while starting tour to show her qualifications
    Iowa Raises Voting Age to Forty-one
    Rioting on Des Moines Campus
    Los Angeles Hi-School Mob Defies School Board
    “Higher Pay, Shorter Hours, no Homework– We Demand Our Right to Elect Teachers, Coaches.”
    Earth-Eating Fad Moves West: Chicago Parson Eats Clay Sandwich in Pulpit

    He was just off by half a century…

    1. Back in 1969, we thought he’d hit it right on the nose. Most of the people I knew back then (I was 19 that year) have spent the intervening half century pining away for the return of the 60s, and are delirious now. I didn’t have much use for drugs and rock&roll, but did enjoy the “chicks for free” bit.

  6. I never had much use for Heinlein as a prognosticator of either hard SF (sliderules in spaaace!) or social theory (recalling that Heinlein was a teenager in the 1920, and probably exposed to too mant LostGen types). However, unlike most people, I did see him as a master literary stylist on a par with the very best of his century. This idea was carefully avoided by Heinlein (who espoused the same “only an entertainer” defense as ERB) and horrifies SFnal types who believe in “transparent prose” and want “to see movies inside their eyes,” but his best novels such as “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and “Glory Road” do things that are utterly opaque to your typical science fiction boob. The same was true of ERB, whose stylistic triumphs are further hidden by the fact he was writing in the vernacular of a hundred years ago. “The Chessman of Mars” successfully manages the same stylistic thrust as “For Whom the Bell Toll,” and published 14 years before Hemingway did his, and I rarely meet anyone who understands what “The Moon Maid” is about (the hero is named Julian and the villain Orthis, ERB had a classical education).

  7. “The narrative of racial conflict peddled by politicians, Big Business and progressives threatens social peace.”

    It is incredibly sad that so many of the Democrat’s victims of racist violence and governance from the past are now perpetrating the same thing against the people the Democrats scapegoat today.

    “Demographer Wendell Cox also notes they are leaving the big progressive cities seeking lower house prices, more opportunities, and, yes, also lower taxes.”

    This is good news because it means they will encounter people they have been inculcated with racist beliefs about and realize that Democrats have been lying to them.

    In the myth about the Southern Strategy and the Great Party Switch, no one mentions the part of the interview with Atwater where he predicts the Republican’s racial agnostic messaging on the economy, patriotism, and national defense will win over black people, just like it would white people, which is what we are seeing now. We just need more people championing the message.

  8. (Copied over from Instapundit comments, where it was in response to the question WHY do our elites court racial apocalypse?)

    Simple. Divide And Rule. The elites are trying to prevent black and latino working/middle class people from realizing they’re under far more economic than racial threat, to keep them from politically unifying with white and asian working/middle classes. The broad national working/middle class coalition protecting its own interests that Trump was working toward would be a mortal threat to the elites.

    Trump was succeeding too, among latinos and to some extent even among blacks – hence the panicked screamingly-obvious late-night vote-dumps when he looked like winning again despite the elite’s huge efforts to rig things ahead of time. And hence the continued massively destructive elite campaign to foment division and strife.

    Mind, the elite doesn’t think they want a racial apocalypse. They think they can control this monster they’ve created. I have my doubts.

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