David J. Williams

John McCain turned on his most vitriolic supporters yesterday, correcting a woman who thought Obama was an Arab terrorist, and telling the crowds they don’t have to be scared in the event of a Democratic victory. He deserves full credit for this, though of course it was his campaign who gave these ignorant fuckwits the idea in the first place, and they’re going to keep giving those ignorant fuckwits the same ideas for the next three weeks (and the four years beyond that too).

Still, one can’t help but wonder how McCain would be doing in the polls if he had never called up the forces of darkness to begin with.  Probably even worse than he is now, but still it’s fun to think about:  what if McCain had run the kind of campaign I suspect he wanted to run?  You think he likes any of this shit?  You think he enjoys pandering to the racist morons who were totally convinced eight years ago that he’d fathered a black child?   You think he relishes saying that Joel Osteen’s book is the best thing he’s ever read?  McCain’s essential tragedy is that the math of the Republican Party as it’s now configured forces its candidates to pander to a voter base that (let’s face it) probably would be a lot happier in a theocracy than a republic.

And that’s why his “stand of honor” yesterday ultimately means little.  Even as the Senator cringes in the face of the venom he’s presiding over, his paid operatives keep on pumping out the Jesusland bullshit, portraying Obama as a man whose first move as president will either be to blow up the White House or paint the whole thing black.  These are the same people who McCain once promised would burn in a “special place in hell” for smearing him so badly back in 2000.  He may end up in one of his own for joining forces with them.  Looking at his anguished face in yesterday’s rally, he may be there already.

There’s a line out there, and McCain/Palin have crossed it. Calling the Democratic candidate unprepared for office is one thing, but whipping up the faithful into a frenzy where cries of “terrorist” and “kill him!” aren’t even being challenged by those at the podium is quite another. And as McCain continues to flounder in the polls, the mood among his supporters is turning so nasty that the press aren’t even being allowed to interview folks at rallies.

The really disquieting thing about all the rhetoric is that it doesn’t actually seem to be working from a tactical perspective.  It galvanizes the die-hards, but it may even be accelerating the shift of swing voters to the Democrats.  The question, then, is why it’s continuing.  There may be no rationale; it’s entirely possible that the campaign is locked into its own rage at this point.  The Rovian schoolyard bully/frat-boy mindset is not one that’s disposed to lose gracefully, and it should come as no surprise to see them choking on their own bile as they confront the growing possibility of an Obama landslide.

And yet there remains one very concrete reason to keep the inflammatory speeches going.  I don’t seriously think that John McCain has it in mind, but as the rallies get uglier, I’m starting to think that someone might.  Simply put, the more that undereducated/confused/racist rednecks hear about how Obama’s a menace to the nation, the more likely it becomes that one of them will take matters into his own hands.  Everyone’s saying the GOP need a game-changer to shake up the race; someone taking a shot at Barack Obama would certainly fit that bill.  We are entering some very dangerous terrain now.

One of the things that was particularly striking about Prez Debate #2 is the continued role-reversal on Pakistan. Obama wants to get in there and take out Bin Laden; McCain says he’s an idiot for saying that. To be fair, the positions are a little more nuanced than that: Obama is saying he’ll pull the trigger if the Pakistani govt won’t, whereas McCain clearly reserves for himself the right to do whatever he wants without telling Pakistan anything in advance (parse his objections, and it’s pretty clear that what he’s really reacting to is Obama being indiscreet enough to talk about secret wars on national TV).

Nonetheless, it’s the mirror-image of what we’re used to seeing.  But Obama knows what happens to Democrats who fail to act tough on foreign policy, particularly in the Age of Terror, and he’s determined to match/raise McCain’s rhetoric wherever possible—a stance that could become problematic as the growing financial crisis opens up a gap between where the American public want to intervene (i.e., everywhere) and where we’re actually capable of intervening (a lot fewer places).  Right now we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the possibility of expanding operations into Iran and Pakistan, either of which would vault us into a whole new level of commitment.

And then there’s Russia.  McCain’s condemnation of her actions in Georgia makes it impossible for Obama to say anything else, but as I’ve noted before, it would be sheer insanity to go to the mat with Russia over anything in the Caucasus.  And yet amidst all the rhetoric, one gets a pretty precise sense of what the candidates clearly believe the American electorate wants to hear.  Tuesday night neither man had the balls to tell the American people that the economy’s on its way to the shitter; there’s no reason to be surprised that they’re not about to mention that the country’s days of policing the world are over.  Everybody’s just going to find that one out the hard way.

Paolo Bacigalupi fielded a question posed by a commenter on his blog recently that continues to make the rounds: whether or not SF writers “undercut their fiction by talking about the election” on their blogs. He gave a good answer that’s worth reading in its entirety, as is John Scalzi’s response. But it’s left me thinking that in some ways, the very fact that someone could even ASK this question is a measure of just how fucked up our political discourse has been getting—or maybe how isolated/out-of-touch certain portions of the SF community have become, and how deep our heads are buried in the sand.

Because as troublesome as I find the question, it gets at a very real problem.  I see lots of authors’ blogs out there; some of them are great, some of them less so; some of them post every day—many (like Making Light) make politics an ongoing focus . . . but there’s a lot of them out there that never, EVER post on the election or on politics.  Presumably some of them don’t care (in which case I can’t help but wonder how they came to write SF in the first place), but one can only assume that others care too much:  they’re worried that they’ll turn off the right, or the left, or whatever, and it’s safer to just talk about their latest book or some Youtube video or a bunch of fucking LOLCats.

And they ought to reconsider.  One of the things that happens in fascist societies (or in societies in which the rule of law is unraveling) is that people become afraid to talk about politics for fear it will impact their livelihood.  Our society feels on the brink to me in ways that it hasn’t previously, and this should concern us all.  We’ve got secret prisons; we’ve got enemies lists that no one can get off of; we’ve got unprecedented surveillance of the homeland; we’ve got an election about to take place amidst horrendous economic conditions and growing accusations of vote fraud . . . and we’ve got far too many people on the sidelines in silence or denial.  And way too many of them are writers.  People, wake up.  Speak up.  You may not have another chance.

Just got word from Bantam that they’ve sold the Spanish language rights to MIRRORED HEAVENS worldwide. Hopefully it’ll hit some bookstores in South America, given that’s where all the opening scenes take place. Or maybe I’ll become like one of those heavy metal bands that fails to crack the U.S. but everytime they go down south, they’re playing in huge arenas before a hundred thousand die-hard fans. I’ll keep everybody posted.

And speaking of, er, fantasy:  following a very favorable recent review at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist* (in which described the book as “a strong candidate for my Unexpected Surprise of the Year), Patrick kindly asked me to do an interview with him, and that’s here.   Tune in for my utterly uncontroversial views on why British SF is kicking American SF’s ass these days.

*He reviews science fiction as well.  But you knew that already.

And suddenly space elevators are back in the news, with a couple of articles getting circulation in anticipation of a conference to be held in Japan in November (someone’s PR dollars are getting results). Not much that’s new here, though I should note that Brian Turner of the Kansas City Space Pirates managed to get on Conan O’Brien, so not bad. The KC Space Pirates, in case you’re wondering, are one of the groups that’s competing for the equivalent of the Space Elevator X prize (actually a series of prizes), so we might here more from them soon.

What I’m still not seeing, though, is anything on LEO elevators. Quick refresher: the holy grail of space elevators is a mega-structure rooted to the equator and extending all the way out past geostationary orbit, whereas THE MIRRORED HEAVENS features a low-orbit elevator, a four thousand kilometer structure that orbits Earth.  What’s the advantage?  Well, a LEO elevator isn’t as tough to build as a GEO elevator, but it’s still pretty useful, since it allows attainment of orbit via suborbital speeds.  More specs are at this NASA paper here, btw (search under “leo space elevator”).  I ripped them off pretty much verbatim for the book, but keep that one to yourself.

And of course none of these great plans and prizes for elevators focus on blowing them up, but I’m sure we’ll get there in due time.  Stay tuned.

Palin came out swinging last night, and won the first part of the debate hands down. Some of her language about a “whole team of mavericks” was pretty laughable, but it was effective, and Biden had his work cut out for him to avoid losing the debate altogether. Ultimately he beat her in the post-debate polling, largely because the more the debate wore on, the more obvious it became just how scripted Palin was. Still, the debate was definitely a strategic win for her, in the sense that she avoided meltdown and ended any chances of her being removed from the ticket.  (Indeed, the rumor that keeps on circulating is that Biden will the one who steps down; this is almost certainly disinformation, but then again, the VP candidate has yet to release his medical records, so it can’t be ruled out.)

Meanwhile the bailout bill has passed both Senate and House and is headed for the pen of the Decider even as I write this.  After that, Paulson can start spending like there’s no tomorrow.  And there may not be, since at least one school of thought says that the bailout could be the very thing that delivers the coup de grace to the economy, undermining the only thing propping up what’s left of the world financial order:  the once mighty dollar.  In which case, we officially become the butt of the joke of the gods, and Paulson and Bernanke will both spend the rest of their lives in prison, along with anyone else various torchlit mobs can round up.

But as to how likely a Shock Medicine Kills the Patient Scenario is . . we’ll just have to see.  My instinct says that when you’re in a giant bubble, the last thing you do is inflate it still further.  But the real problem is that economics is fraught with all the uncertainty of any open system, particularly when you get down to the system’s axioms (e.g., is a Keynesian approach even valid anymore?).  Were the next great depression to begin tomorrow, everyone would have lots of reasons why, but no one could have predicted it with 100% surety.  And if things turn around and cruise back to normal, same thing:  lots of reasons will be handed out, but there’s no way anyone could have known for sure in advance.  Some say that capitalism is an awesome thing; I prefer the word “precarious.”  And getting ever more so.

If ever there was a wild-card debate, it’s this one. Everyone’s expecting Biden to mop the floor with Palin, but I’m not so sure. First of all, Biden’s prone to gaffes, and has a motormouth that may as well be powered by the Energizer bunny. The more he talks, the less Palin has to say.  Which is exactly how her handlers want it: as of a few days back, the word leaked from the McCain camp was that the debate prep for Palin was going less than stellar (astonishing as that may sound), but keep in mind that prepping for a debate is different than prepping for an interview. What’s been killing Palin are the follow-up questions that take her out of the Land of Prepared Scripting, and there’s far less opportunity for that kind of cross-ex in a debate.

Nonetheless, it’s clear that the odds against her are as long as a candidate at this level has faced. There’s a reason why the McCain camp was trying to postpone this one, and it’s the same reason why moderator Gwen Ifill is being subjected to an unprecedented pre-emptive attack in the name of expectations management. There may even be scenarios where Palin cancels the debate altogether and flies back to Alaska to deal with the sudden health problem of a family member (my money would be on Trig).  But . . .  there are also scenarios where Biden comes off as an arrogant prick, and Palin as a likeable Annie Oakley, dispensing frontier justice and witticisms from her quiver of pre-fabricated (yet potentially world-class) sound-bites, thereby arresting the free-fall into which her poll #s have gone into.  Stranger things have happened in American politics, that’s for sure.  Tonight is going to be a don’t-miss-it circus.

The failure of the bailout bill has set off all the usual recriminations, though as of this writing the market is regaining some of the ground it lost yesterday. The bill that went down to defeat yesterday was certainly rife with problems: as economist Nouriel Roubini (one of the few who saw the financial tsunami coming) points out, it lacked numerous safeguards and put far more of the public’s money at risk than is prudent. Nonetheless it seems virtually certain that some kind of bill will pass shortly.

But the underlying damage has already been done. Future historians are likely to mark 2000 as the apogee of the American Empire; the decline since then has been as swift as it was unnecessary.  Wed to their belief in American exceptionalism, the country’s leaders ran up huge debts to support wars that (as enemies like Bin Laden anticipated) undermined the state’s finances.  And the people showed even greater myopia, spending like there was no tomorrow even as they lapsed into endless blue state/red state culture strife.  The world economy has depended for way too long on the ability of the U.S. consumer to place him/herself in ever greater debt.  We’ve now reached the limits of that ability, and we’ve got a long way to fall.  We may or may not be heading for a second great depression, but we are certainly heading for a multipolar world (at first financially, but ultimately politically).  And the transition to it will be anything but pretty.

The possibility of an October surprise has never loomed so large over an election, partially because there are just so many possibilities this year. The following is by no means an exhaustive list, but I think it does cover the major categories.

1. War with Iran. This is far less likely than it might have seemed a few months back, as this article in the Guardian attests.  It would be sheer insanity for the U.S. to start anything, since Iran’s capability for retaliation (both in Iraq and in the Gulf) is considerable.  Nonetheless, it would be to McCain’s electoral advantage, and is impossible to discount altogether.

2.  Bin Laden found. Bin Laden’s capture/death would go a long way toward vindicating Bush II in the eyes of the American people, though (in stark contrast to 04) such an event wouldn’t automatically redound to the benefit of the GOP candidate. Nonetheless, this may be why the temperature on the Pakistani border has been increasing so dramatically (note I said “may“).

3. War with Pakistan.  Caught between the U.S. and its own militants, Pakistan may lash out in unpredictable ways.  There’s also the (remote) possiblity of an Islamic coup.

4.  Al-Qaeda launches attacks in U.S.   It’s no secret that Al-Qaeda would love to disrupt the U.S. election, and the internet traffic predicting such an event is growing (as it usually does at this point in the election cycle). There are too many intangibles here to anticipate how this would impact the election; also of note is that in 2004, second-tier U.S. officials discussed postponing the election entirely in the event of such an attack (for which there is no legal basis).

5. Catastrophic incident against a candidate.  I’d be reluctant to even mention this, were it not for the fact that Senator Clinton has already gone on record about the issue, and had not one plot already surfaced.

6.  U.S. dollar meltdown. This would seem to be more of a medium-term scenario than an immediate possibility.  But we are very much in uncharted economic waters now, and anything could happen.

7.  Bristol Palin’s wedding. Well, this surprised me, that’s for sure.  It’s not on the same level as the items above, but apparently it just might happen, and if so, it’d be a #$# media circus.  How many more plot twists can one election take?