Chrononautic Log

October 31, 2003

Another interview, with a live guy this time: James Weinstein, founding editor of In These Times, on Salon.

So as time went on, and especially in the New Deal, the ideas that had originally been totally marginal became the property of the mainstream of American political discourse, and meanwhile socialists had nothing new to say, because the Russian Revolution had thrown the whole movement backward. What came to mean ”socialism” after the Russian Revolution was this incredibly backward, pre-capitalist, pre-industrial society whose main goal was to catch up with the west. I mean, in my book I show how the Russian city of Magnitogorsk became the model of a socialist city, but it replicated Gary, Ind. — everything radiated out from the steel mill! — which was probably the worst failed American city. I mean, they had no idea what socialism was. It was a terrible throwback, the use of slave labor, the absence of any kind of political democracy. And yet the communists, who really were at the time the most vital force in the American left, were defending it.

I’ve driven through Gary, Indiana. He’s got a point. (But of course so does the ghost of Karl Marx, who points out that there was no way under any system that industrializing someplace as backward as Tsarist Russia was going to be all ponies and ice cream.)

From there Weinstein goes on to some discussion of what’s continued to go wrong with the American left — or rather with American leftists, since Weinstein maintains there’s no such thing as the American left at the moment. It kind of deteriorates into a discussion of the Democratic presidential primaries, but it’s interesting stuff nonetheless.

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The European rapier isn’t my weapon, but to me these kids don’t look half bad. If they got this far just by watching Errol Flynn movies, I’m quite impressed. (Hell, if they were taking fencing lessons, I’m impressed by that, too.)

Figure 1. Aaron Siskind, ‘Boys playing with toy swords,’ Harlem, New York, ca. 1930-1940

Interestingly, inner-city New York fencing seems to be making a comeback.

(Courtesy of Making Light and the Library of Congress. From the exhibit When They Were Young: A Photographic Retrospective of Childhood.)

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October 30, 2003

Courtesy of Nick Mamatas and Ken Macleod, a highly entertaining interview with the ghost of Karl Marx, conducted by historian Donald Sassoon.

Donald Sassoon: Well, Dr Marx, you are all washed up, aren’t you? Fifteen years ago your theories ruled half the world. Now what's left? Cuba? North Korea?

Karl Marx: My ‘theories’ — as you put it — never ‘ruled.’ I had followers I neither chose nor sought, and for whom I have no more responsibility than Jesus had for Torquemada or Muhammad for Osama bin Laden. Self-appointed followers are the price of success. Most of my contemporaries would love to be as washed up as you think I am. I wrote that the point was not to explain the world, but to change it. And how many eminent Victorians have done so?

. . . In reality my work has never been as important as it is now. Over the last 40 years or so it has conquered the academy in the most advanced countries in the world. Historians, economists, social scientists, and even, to my surprise, some literary critics have all turned to the materialist conception. The most exciting history currently produced in the US and Europe is the most ‘Marxistic’ ever. Just go to the annual convention of the American Social Science History Association, which I attend regularly as a ghost. There they earnestly examine the interconnection between institutional and political structures and the world of production. They all talk about classes, structures, economic determination, power relations, oppressed and oppressors. And they all pretend to have read me — a sure sign of success.

See, this is what I’m talking about.

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October 29, 2003

Maureen McHugh has an interesting post in the Tangent Online newsgroup:

Transparent prose is a particular style in American English science fiction where vocabulary is somewhat anglo-saxon rather than highly Latinate (except for technical language, often invented for the story.) Characterization is simplified . . . Sentences tend to be subject verb object . . . There are stylistic conventions associated with transparent prose as well — progress, particularly scientific progress — is good. Culture is portrayed in ways that are familiar to white Americans . . . Events are described clearly and minimally, often using a kind of short hand that relies on the reader’s experience with literature or movies to fill in what isn’t described. It also relies on established conventions of the genre to avoid explanation.

This is a more or less well-known phenomenon that extends beyond science fiction — what Linton Weeks of the Washington Post described as the “No-Style Style.” It may not be to everyone’s taste, but then neither is James Joyce or Annie Proulx — so no harm done, right?

Maybe, maybe not. Maureen goes on to make an interesting point:

If worldview is treated as an aspect of science fiction, then it’s hard to extrapolate a future worldview in this style because the language restrictions of ‘transparent prose’ preclude the conveyance of events and ideas which don’t share basic assumptions of language and culture with the reader.

Somehow it doesn’t seem so harmless any more — at least in an SF context. Isn’t SF supposed to be about challenging assumptions?

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October 27, 2003

J. Bradford DeLong’s thirteen-year old son is working his way through Greg Mankiw’s Principles of Economics.

“You mean that back before civilization economics was much simpler?" asks the Ten-Year-Old.

“Yes,” says the Thirteen-Year-Old. “Back then, Principles of Economics books were really simple. They said: ‘(1) Find a rock. (2) Throw the rock to kill some small furry creature. (3) Eat the small furry creature.’ That was it. But then things became more complicated. People invented farming, and some people became peasant farmers who grew the crops.”

“And other people became workers who made pots,” says the Ten-Year-Old. “And other people became blacksmiths who made spears.”

“And,” says the Thirteen-Year-Old, “then the people who got the spears told the peasants and the workers to give them half their crop — or else!”

“But,” says the Ten-Year-Old, “the peasants and the workers made an alliance with the small furry animals. And then one night while the spear-chuckers were all asleep they raised the banner of revolution!”

“Now wait a minute,” I say. The economics I teach is not the Materialist Interpretation of History crossed with the Chronicles of Narnia.

Aw, Dad, you’re no fun any more.

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I was kind of hoping there’d be some good news to report if I put off reporting this, but there isn’t, so here goes: Large parts of Southern California, including a part that I grew slightly up in, the part that Lara more seriously grew up in and that her family still lives in, the part Rob’s brother’s family lives in, the parts relatives of mine on both sides live in, and possibly the part Antone lives in, are still burning out of control.

Figure 1. Fires spotted by satellite in the last 24 hours, 3AM MDT 27 October 2003. Image courtesy United States Forest Service.

If anyone can find a better way of tracking the San Diego fires, in particular, than trying to piece a picture together from CHP incident reports, let me know, will you? Lara’s family had been safely evacuated, last I knew, but I still haven’t heard from anyone else down there.

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Update (8:56 a.m.): Mom’s side of the family is all accounted for, and hasn’t had to evacuate, though aunt Diane’s office may have burned down. Lara’s house is apparently still standing, though the authorities are telling evacuees not to move back in yet in case the wind changes and sends the fire north again. On the other side of the family, still no word from uncle Lance.

It’s not over; it’s still pretty much zero percent contained. It’s just moved on to neighborhoods where I don’t know anybody.

Rob’s got more news on the San Bernadino fire. Like he says, it doesn’t look good.

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October 26, 2003

All-Star Stories and Wheatland Press announce an open reading period for All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, a new retro-pulp anthology to be published in late 2004, edited by David Moles and Jay Lake.

Fig. 1. All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories

Guidelines available in HTML, PDF, and plain text at http://www.allstarstories.com.

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October 24, 2003

Yes, it’s a slow afternoon here in Seattle. Where was this good weather last weekend when I needed it?

John Snow, the Treasury secretary, told The Times of London on Monday that he expected the U.S. economy to add two million jobs before the next election — that is, almost 200,000 per month. His forecast was higher than those of most independent analysts; nothing in the data suggests that jobs are being created at that rate. . . .

[T]o have kept up with the population growth since Mr. Bush took office, the economy would have to add not two million, but seven million jobs by next November.

Mr. Bush’s employment policies would truly have been a success if he had left the job market no worse than he found it. In fact, even his own Treasury secretary thinks he’ll fall five million or so jobs short of that mark. . . .

Congress has given [Bush] everything he has wanted in terms of economic policy, even though that has led to a frightening explosion in federal debt: in the current fiscal year the Bush tax cuts will account for almost $300 billion of a deficit expected to top $500 billion. (If that $300 billion had been used to employ workers directly — a new WPA, anyone? — it would have created six million jobs.)

—— Paul Krugman, “Too Low A Bar”, NYT 24 Oct. 2003

In case you missed the point, Congress has given Bush pretty much every damned thing he’s asked for on the economic front, and the economy still is in the tank. Voodoo economics doesn’t work.

Whereas, y’know, we at least got some pretty decent public art out of the WPA.

But that would mean, like, trusting the gummint with our money. And this is obviously not a government we can trust with our money.

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We’ve talked about how some people don’t feel the films have gotten their due; to me, that’s something to be vigilant about, because it’s a trap. I mean, how much credit do you need? You find people getting greedy, even over that. It’s one thing to expect to be paid the money or respect you’re owed and have earned. But ideally that is not really why you’re doing the job in the first place; you’re expecting to be treated fairly, yes, but that is not guaranteed. That is something that either comes to you or it doesn’t, that you will sometimes need to fight for.

If you’re going to get pissed off about not getting your due in terms of special individual attention in popularity contests such as award shows, that’s akin to not being satisfied with working within a group for the common good. What you can control is your attitude and the integrity of your own effort.

—— Viggo Mortensen, interviewed in Salon

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I was really going to leave the California election alone, but — someone at Knight-Ridder apparently had the bright idea of sending reporters out to interview Iraqi bodybuilders about it. How can I pass that up?

“For me as a bodybuilder and coach, Arnold is like a very big book. His way of training, his experience, we follow every step of his career,” said Saif Abdul Razak Hussein, 23, who spends most days at the Rasheed Center for Bodybuilding on al Maamoon Street. “It’s good to see someone like him, someone like us, running a big state.”

Practically every Iraqi knows Arnold is governor-elect of California. One gym changed its name to The Arnold Classic after Schwarzenegger won.

Like many Americans, Iraqis are divided about whether he has the experience to pull a state the size of Iraq out of its economic slump.

But most think he’ll do a better job running California than their own interim Governing Council will do managing the challenges of rebuilding postwar Iraq. . . .

“Before, I had a good opinion of Arnold, but right now my opinion has completely changed. When he came here to speak to soldiers I was disappointed, because I thought he agreed with what the American soldiers did,“ said Amir Foaad Abed, 19.. . . .

Still, Abed said Arnold would do a good job as governor because he was elected. “Because he’s famous, he’s an actor, he’s rich, so people elected him for those reasons. So he will do a good job.”

Can’t argue with logic like that. Maybe we can win over the hearts and minds of the Afghanis by screening Red Scorpion for them and electing Dolph Lundgren to something or other. At least Lundgren was a Fulbright scholar.

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Saint Drausinus (Bishop of Soissons, d. c. 674) is, apparently, the patron saint of the invincible. What do they need the help of a patron saint for?

Figure 1. The municipal seal of Soissons, about 550 years newer than St. Drausinus, a picture of whom I was unable to find. But look, maybe one of those guys on the side is supposed to be Drausinus. You never know.

Apparently he’s also the patron saint of people merely thought to be invincible. They, on the other hand, undoubtedly need all the help they can get.

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October 23, 2003

Iran, naturally. It’s starting. Expect blame for everything that’s going wrong in Iraq to be gradually shifted to Ansar al-Islam, and blame for Ansar al-Islam to be shifted to Iran.

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A fantastic collection of vintage newspaper advertisements, 1920s through 1960s, culled from the microfilm archives of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Fig. 1. Oshkosh B’Gosh: The World’s Best Fitting Overall. 1939.

The collector, Mr. James Lileks, has some other fun stuff, too, like “The Gallery of Regrettable Food” and “The Grooviest Motel in Wisconsin.” Worth checking out.

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October 22, 2003

Finally got around China Miéville’s The Scar a couple of weeks ago, after picking up a mass-market paperback copy in Heathrow on my way to Brussels. (Couldn’t find a UK trade edition to match my Perdido Street Station, unfortunately. Still, at least I got the UK cover art.)

Figure 1. The UK cover art.

If The Scar has a flaw, it’s that while the protagonist, Bellis Coldwine, is not so cold and remote that you can’t identify with her, she’s cold and remote enough that it’s hard to really believe in her emotional attachment to New Crobuzon — which you have to, in order for her actions to make sense. The thing itself is not so implausible (I have known sane people to love London, Los Angeles, even Texas), but given that New Crobuzon is such a nasty place — and that Bellis knows that, having found herself on the wrong side of the city’s monstrous government and ubiquitous secret police — I would have liked to see Miéville spend more time developing that love / hate relationship.

It doesn’t matter much in the end, though, because there’s so much else to like. The minor characters are fantastic — the Brucolac was my particular favorite, one of the best vampires and best antiheroes I’ve seen in quite a while — and the scenery is magnificent. The plot, appropriately, twists like a fish, raising hopes and fears aplenty; I must have been wrong three or four times about what was really going on, and yet it nearly always made sense. The writing is less extravagant than Perdido’s — Byzantine rather than Gothic — and mostly excellent. I can’t think of the last book I read that could match it for sheer atmosphere (Walter Jon Williams’ Metropolitan and City on Fire, maybe?) and there are some brilliant set-piece scenes that I think will stick with me for years.

In short, it’s just as good as everyone said it was; maybe better.

Figure 1. A model of the Great Eastern.

One side note, just because I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else: Those of you who have read Stephen Baxter may have already run across Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s monumental steam liner, the Great Eastern, also known as the Leviathan.

The centerpiece of The Scar’s floating city Armada, the Grand Easterly, is an obvious reference to Brunel’s ship; but while the only on-line notes of this I can find (a review in the Philadelphia Enquirer and a note on the LiveJournal NeoVictoria) call this a “salute” and a “tribute,” I think it should properly be characterized as a “jab.” Miéville’s Grand Easterly is presented not as a marvel so much as a monumental engineering folly.

Figure 1. The Great Eastern being broken up for scrap.

What I’m wondering is: Who’s it a jab at? Brunel? Baxter? The Victorian idea of better living through engineering? Or — taking the rest of the book into account — the whole imperial, English, Victorian project?

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Can anyone point me to some information on what typefaces were commonly used in popular fiction and/or pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s? (For the body text, that is, not the covers.) I could try to find some representative sample pages, but I’m not optimistic about my ability to recognize typefaces, or identify anachronisms.

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October 20, 2003

I’ve got plenty of better things to do, but I absolutely have to stop to point out John Scalzi’s absolutely hilarious series of anti-Confederate rants. (Courtesy of Electrolite.) Quoth Mr. Scalzi:

The Confederate States of America was a fundamentally evil institution. Period, end of sentence. That’s “evil,” spelled "E-V-I-L.” “Evil,” as in “morally reprehensible,” “sinful,” “wicked,” “pernicious,” “offensive” and “noxious.” “Evil,” as in “the world is a demonstrably better place without this thing in it.” Evil. That’s right, evil. Once again, for those of you who haven’t figured it out yet: Evil. And for those of you yet hard of hearing, the ASL version:

Really, I don’t know how much clearer I can make it.

I have plenty of respect for the occasional thoughtful, liberal, humanist defender of the Confederacy like Will Shetterly, but I have to say I think Mr. Scalzi is dead on. If you don’t agree, go read all his arguments before you come back and tell me so.

(Oh, and if you want to know how I feel about the Civil War — as opposed to what I think, which is maybe a little more complicated — read Maureen McHugh’s short story “The Lincoln Train”. It’s in New Skies, among other places, and New Skies also has plenty of other good stuff in it.)

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October 15, 2003

Looks like China’s done it.

[Washington Post] China on Wednesday became the third nation to send a man into space, launching a Long March 2F rocket that carried a 38-year-old former fighter pilot on a journey to take him around Earth 14 times, state media reported.

The Chinese space mission, which came 42 years after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and American Alan Shepard became the first men in space, was expected to last 21 hours. The capsule, containing the astronaut, known as a taikonaut or yunhangyuan in Chinese, is scheduled to touch down near the Jiuchuan launch station in the Gobi Desert, 1,000 miles west of Beijing.

Figure 1. Long March 2F rocket carrying Shenzhou 5 space capsule.

State media identified the taikonaut as Lt. Col. Yang Liwei, from Manchuria. Yang was described as an athletic former fighter pilot who has an 8-year-old son, likes swimming and skating, and has not seen his younger brother or elder sister in three years while he prepared to become China's first man in space.

. . . China's media appeared poised to turn the launch into a grand campaign touting China's communist system. "I will not disappoint the motherland," Yang was quoted on China's biggest news Web site www.Sina.com, as saying. "I will complete each movement with total concentration. And I will gain honor for the People's Liberation Army and for the Chinese nation." He added, "See you tomorrow."

The space program, which is believed to have a budget of $2 billion a year, is run by the People's Liberation Army.

Gosh, it’s just like the good old days, only without the depressing nuclear standoff. Makes me want to dig up my Sino-Colombian cold war novel again.

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October 13, 2003

. . . ADVENTURE, with WONDER a close second.

The nice thing about westbound jet lag is that it lets you get up at ten minutes to five a.m., feeling all perky and productive. So I spent a couple of hours in the cafe this morning writing some code — really quite embarrassingly bad code, but functional — to tally up the results of the Zeppelin anthology title poll. With 21 ballots cast, ADVENTURE wins under both Instant Runoff Voting and Condorcet; so the guidelines that will come out at the end of the month will be for ALL-STAR ZEPPELIN ADVENTURE STORIES. Ask for it by name.

(The nice thing about eastbound jet lag is that it lets you stay up past midnight, hanging out and drinking good Belgian beer at L’Archiduc. That’s much better than writing code, but harder to keep up for extended periods of time.)

On a side note, I’ve just found out that I was born on the 42nd anniversary of the R101 disaster. That probably explains everything.

Figure 1. The R101 in mid-1930, before its name became inseparable from the word ‘disaster’.

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Update (27 Oct 2003): Submission guidelines for All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories are now available at http://www.allstarstories.com/.

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“The Memory of Water”, my English Patient - influenced stab at the New Weird, is up at Strange Horizons.

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October 12, 2003

Back on Pacific Standard Time. Brilliant time in Brussels thanks particularly to Hannah and Malcolm, and also to Mel (and her husband Jan), who hooked up with us for dinner Saturday.

Tired. More later.

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October 10, 2003

London’s getting a little old, though. Next time: more exercise, lighter coat, antihistamines. (And don’t expect to get any writing done.)

Side note: A capsule review of M. John Harrison’s Light: A third of the way through, and I still couldn’t bring myself to care whether any of the characters lived or died. Sorry. I tucked it under the hotel desk, between the phone book and the Gideon Bible. Maybe someone else will get more out of it.

But now, off to Brussels — city of, one assumes, chocolate, impressive architecture, political scandals, and people who speak French but can nontheless count all the way to 100 without having to resort to numbers like “sixty-twelve.” Should be good.

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October 6, 2003

Landed, safe and nearly sound; got to the hotel, cleaned up, came down to Charing Cross Road, bought books, had coffee, had dinner.

Now the trick is just to stay awake until it’s time to go to sleep.

Worst thing about London: The hotels are always, always, about a star and a half down from what they advertise themselves as being. (You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now. Ah, well, at least the sheets are clean. But next time I’m ponying up £200/night for the Savoy — and expecting the McMinnville Best Western.)

Second worst thing about London: Those cretins at Earthlight haven’t put out the new Walter Jon Williams yet. (This is the sort of thing that happens when your SF line suddenly “enjoy[s] the benefits of belonging to the main body of the fiction list” — announcement quoted in Ansible, Aug. 03. Okay, probably it was already scheduled that way, but I’m still pissed.)

Best thing about London: A guy can get away with forgetting to pack his comb, so long as his hair at least lays down flat. (In fact, it makes you look more British.)

Okay, like I said, the trick is trying to stay awake.

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October 3, 2003

Wrapping up all the loose ends — laundry, dry cleaning, bills . . . and picking up some pounds sterling so I’ll have money for the Tube.

If any of you happen to run into Treasury Secretary John Snow while I’m gone, say at a cocktail party, do me a favor: Whap him upside the head, from me, and ask him what the hell he was thinking.

These exchange rates suck.

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If you’re not sure, consult BS 6008:1980 (or its equivalent ISO standard, ISO 3103:1980; but I can’t find a bootleg copy of that one on line, so it’ll cost you forty Swiss francs). A sample of the useful information contained therein:

The flavour and appearance of the liquor are affected by the hardness of the water used. The water used for the test should therefore be similar to the drinking water in the area where the tea is to be consumed. In exceptional cases, for example when comparative tests are requird to be made in different areas and it is not possible to procure similar waters or suitable ordinary water for this purpose, distilled water or deionized water may be used. It should be recognized, however, that the reslts will not then necessarily bear a true relation to the flavour of the liquor produced with ordinary drinking water, since the mineral salts in the latter may modify the flavour and appearance of the tea.

I’m glad we got that cleared up.

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Finished the first draft of the outline for the Planetary Romance at ten to nine this morning — even, after four and a half years of kicking this project around in my head, finally came up with a working title I could live with (Intervention). Thirteen thousand, one hundred fifty-something words of outline, and I was pruning plot loops, killing off characters, and swapping names, genders, and fates right up to the last minute. Thank God I wasn’t trying to do that to an actual novel manuscript — though I’m sure it’ll still be just as bad in the end.

Now I’m not going to work on it for at least two weeks.

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October 2, 2003

The polls for the anthology title selection are now open. It’ll remain open at least till I get back from England on the 12th; vote as many times as you like, but I’m only going to count the last one, which is the main reason the form asks for an email address. Don’t worry, it’s not going to get on the internet anywhere, or be used to send spam, or anything like that. (In fact, if you don’t want to give your email address, you can give your name instead — but if I don’t know your address, I won’t be able to contact you if there’s a problem with your ballot.)

Your actual vote will be kept confidential. I’ll tally the ballots and post the results after I get back.

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UPDATE: The usual rule about no campaigning within X-hundred yards of a polling place doesn’t apply here; if anyone wants to promote, slander, or otherwise comment on the candidates, the comment section for this post is the place to do it. And, again, you’re free to change your vote any time before the polls close.

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UPDATE: Number of voters as of midnight UTC (4 p.m. Pacific time): 12.

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Update (27 Oct 2003): Submission guidelines for All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories are now available at http://www.allstarstories.com/.

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October 1, 2003

A handy spotter’s guide for someone writing a political SF novel (yes, the planetary romance is also a political SF novel), but also handy for Jane and Joe Citizen.

These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

—— “Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt”, NYRB 22 June 1995, Utne Reader November-December 1995.

(Reproduced on some site called Reality Macedonia — apparently a news and opinion site dedicated to keeping Macedonia from being absorbed into a Greater Albania. Via . . . well, I’ll update this if I can remember where I found the link.)

Some choice tidbits:

• [Under Nazism,] the rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

• Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. . . . The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

• In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

• Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.

• The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. . . . However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

• For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. . . . . Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such “final solutions” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

• Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world. . . . But . . . the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.

• In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

• In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view — one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights. . . Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter.

• Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.  . . . All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

And, finally, a reminder for us in particular:

Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

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