Category: history

To Be Clear

Posted on June 27, 2022July 18, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

In the past, I have attempted to present my arguments, my sentiments, in respectful, intellectual, philosophically relevant languageâ€”not always successfully, I admit; sometimes my dismay and anger get the better of me, and sometimes there are things too unbelievably stupid to warrant much, if any, respectâ€”and to leave some opening for debate.Â

No more.

With the recent Supreme Court rulings, it should be clear to everyone that what is happening is nothing less than an attempt by extralegal and institutional force to change the nature of our country. This is nothing new. What is new (new-ish) is the outright lies and misrepresentation in which these attempts are couched and the complete shameless embrace of those lies.…

Now That We’re Here

Posted on June 8, 2022June 23, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

The Transgender Issue.

Excuse me? Issue? What issue?

This is in some part about science fiction, but really about my entire civilization, and touches on the choices we have facing us. I start with the so-called Transgender Issue because it exemplifies a problem I’ve been having with certain apparent contradictions.

As far as I’m concerned, the issue is not with trans people but with those who are ideologically opposed to them. The concerns they raise run counter to what I grew up expecting.*

I suppose none of this should surprise me, and from some quarters it doesn’t. I do wonder who made them arbiter of other people’s sense of self, but we’ve never had a shortage of the self-appointed in search of an issue to inflate their own sense of importance.…

3000 Words About Bad Faith

Posted on May 23, 2022July 3, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

We compartmentalize. All the time. We divide things up so they don’t inhibit our ability to act, to judge, to feel. We don’t even seem to have to learn how, it just develops as life unfolds. The walls, though, are porous, and occasionally they collapse altogether. But they re-establish given opportunity.Â

But sometimes the divide between one part of ourselves and another can become toxically entangled. It can cause a lot of pain, confusion. When challenged, there’s a kind of panic that attends to our desperate attempt to put those walls back up, to find a way back to the comforting areas where one thing did not conflictâ€”violently at timesâ€”with another.…

Trekness

Posted on May 15, 2022June 24, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

I sometimes marvel at my own inability to apprehend the cluelessness of my fellow beings. Some positions come out of theÂ zeitgeist that leave me gobsmacked at the utter feckless density of people.

And then I recover and reconsider and realize, no, I’ve been hearing this kind of nonsense my entire life. One just never expects it from those one considers allies. It calls into question all assumptions, then, about what one considers an ally, and the realization (which has always been there, really) clarifies that it’s all surface.

There are fans ofÂ Star Trek who have apparently only ever cared about the ship, the uniforms, the phasers, and the astronomy (such as it is).…

Backlash

Posted on May 3, 2022March 24, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

I’m seeing a lot of comments that This Is The Beginning. Referring of course to the leaked SCOTUS opinion to overturn Roe.

No, this is not the beginning. The beginning was the first time we allowed the so-called Pro-Life movement to derail state services to protest something that ought to be considered a basic right. It has grown from that seed. This is not the beginning, this is somewhere along just past the middle.

The mistakes—only in hindsight in some instances, but not all—began when we allowed the notion that one person’s idea of proper behavior merited their intrusion into another person’s life choices.…

Post Pandemic?

Posted on April 3, 2022April 3, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

Our governor, Mike Parsons, has announced that, for Missouri, the pandemic is over. It’s been demoted to “endemic.” Which means, in case anyone is wondering, that it’s not gone, it has “settled in” as a constant, like the flu or colds or mosquitoes. He’s more or less following the trend. People are abandoning their masks and it appears to have reached a point where he might as well give it the seal of approval or look like a stick in the mud. Or a Democrat.

I’m still masking. Depending on where I am, this is becoming a minority practice. I’m waiting for the notices of a new spike, but who knows?…

Patriots

Posted on March 19, 2022February 1, 2023 By Mark Tiedemann

I want to be precise here, so there is no misunderstanding. There will be, because the moment it becomes clear that I’m being critical of a certain posture, some will stop understanding what I’ve written (many would stop reading) and will fall back to automatic reactions that are designed to shield them from any meaningful reassessment. It can’t be helped. People live by heuristics, build walls of rhetorical shielding behind which they can feel secure, and doubt is anathema. Questioning becomes a threat. Just by bringing up the idea of an alternative point of view, the defenses come into play to shunt these ideas and their purveyors into a predetermined category, one which says that they need not be listened to, in fact, must not be.…

Just a Brief Comment About Upcoming Election Year Stupidity

Posted on March 12, 2022March 12, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

I know, I know, you catch more flies with honey, etc etc.Â I don’t care.

I would like to address the growing expectation (at least in the media) that there will be a Red Wave this fall, and the GOP will retake the Senate and House. I’m a bit of a history buff, I know these things happen cyclically, that the first midterm after a Party regains the White House tends to end up in the hands of the Other Party,Â Yadda yadda. And I’m hearing the pundits talk about Biden getting the blame for this or that and his approval ratings, etc.…

The Other Country

Posted on February 24, 2022February 25, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

Two things prompt me to write this: the first is the number of Trump-aligned members of the GOP who are praising Putin’s incursion into and threat against Ukraine. The second is the verdict in the federal hate crimes trial against the three men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.

Bear with me.

With the ratification of the Constitution of the United States and the general agreement about what it suggested for the country then newly-formed, a divide opened between Ideals and Aspirations. That divide has widened and diminished over the years, but never gone away completely, and today it is a massive canyon.…

Life Of Words

Posted on February 6, 2022February 8, 2022 By Mark Tiedemann

My last post dealt with my principled opinions and feelings about book banning/burning. This one will be personal.

I realize it sounds clichÃ©d when someone says reading saved their lives, but it shouldn’t. Our lives are saved by the people around us, those who are with us, relatives and friends and teachers, in an ever-widening circle of familiarity. That network is the reason we are alive and the people we are. I know it’s fashionable to try to claim island status, that we are ourselves by our own hand, but it’s nonsense, and even those most stridently dedicated to that bit of myth know better, unless they are so utterly isolated as to be clinically dysfunctional.…