On the Passing Scene XIII

I had a series of thoughts, none of them warranting a full-length post. You know the drill.

• So it might be moot, since I'm planning to self-publish, but I don't think I'd be able to join the SFWA anyway. Scalzi is its president, after all, and I'd feel bad asking him to represent someone who has such a low opinion of him.
  
  Besides, as a Slav (well, one-quarter) I'm offended by their presumption we have to pronounce their organization's name "sɪfwə" or "sɛfwə". "Sfwɑ" is quite doable for me, thank you, and I'll stick a finger through the neck of anyone who says otherwise.


• Jonah Goldberg makes me happy, even if he is an ideologue—a part of his ideology is trying to avoid ideological excess, a Sysyphean paradox he's better at than most. But he's just a funny guy, like when he described a car he heard about on Car Talk as having more problems than Boy George playing the Saudi royal palace.
  
  More than that, though, he, more than any other conservative writer except Bozell, feels no need to kowtow to the Libertarians. I think this "batshit=authentic" thing, that makes many sane right-leaning people feel they're somehow less pure than froth-mouthed Ron Paul-worshipers, probably has its origins in the post-hippie period. Every ideology suffers from it, of course, charges of "insufficient revolutionary zeal" and so on, but in right-leaning circles it has a particular flavor. You see it, for instance, in right wingers of the Greg Gutfeld school, more than a little over-concerned with their "punk" credentials.
  
  Hint: "punk" means "bitch", and "bitch" means "gets screwed". In other words, to accept that as the arbiter of authenticity is to embrace the class-war.


• Speaking of class-war, how has nobody noticed that, point by point, Ayn Rand's stories are by-the-book class-war narratives, except she sides with the capitalists. And not the real capitalists—the human beings who belong to the investor class, and upon whom others are dependent for employment—but the inhuman creatures of Marxist mythology. Well, except she doesn't even know enough economics to know what an employee is, or how purchasing architectural plans works (hint, you don't own a building just because you designed it, and it's not his property Roarke destroys).
  
  Huh, I'm pretty sure Rand invalidates all her criticism of Marxism just by the fact she doesn't appear to actually know the definition of "proletarian".


• You know how people have this strange idea that hereditary political power is just wrong? It's a superstitious taboo on all sides of the political spectrum, the kind of thing that makes a rational person feel like he lives among skin-clad savages.
  
  It's more allowable from leftists, though, since they, at least, are not adamant in their support for the rights of inheritance. If one has earned one's position—and most hereditary ranks were originally bestowed for military service—why is it wrong to suppose one can hand it down to one's heirs? How is political power different from monetary power? Other, I mean, than the fact political power, even in an absolute monarchy (let alone a medieval one) is always the most closely monitored of all human enterprises, subject to uncountable constraints of law, custom, and competing claims. Why should it be wrong to hand that down in families, if it's not wrong to hand down the far less monitored and constrained power bestowed by wealth?
  
  Forgive me if I upset you. I am not of your tribe, and do not fear being carried off by the ghosts of the Founding Fathers.


• Which reminds me, I was thinking about how, in the Imperial German and Austrian militaries, an officer could not be promoted beyond his father's rank. And I was wondering if there was a way around it for my felinoids, who would have a similar problem.
  
  At first I thought they might promote the parent and child together (they have just as many female nobles/officers as male, just like the medievals did), but they're as strictly meritocratic as the Grande Armée was, so that'd be uncharacteristic. So then I thought, getting himself promoted, on merit, to the same rank as his parent, would probably be a good way for a given noble to demonstrate his worthiness to the succession, and it'd be an encouraging note for the parent to retire on, too.
  
  Huh, hey, what the hell was Captain Keyes in the first Halo doing, that his daughter is only one rank lower than him?


• I don't know if you've done it lately—SciFi Channel will let you rectify it soon enough, it's like Scooby Doo for Boomerang—but if you re-watch The Twilight Zone, the original I mean, you'll notice something. It's just the same bunch of talking points about race, war, peace, wealth, beauty, etc., as every show on TV now (other than Serling not actually talking moral equivalence RE: the Soviets, because he had a soul).
  
  But I don't think it's fair to judge; there's a trope called "SeinfeldIsUnfunny", after all. The Twilight Zone really was doing something, and when Serling said those things, it was legitimate, he'd come by it honestly, he wasn't just vomiting up what had been spoon-fed him. Now you might say he did his job too well, or something, but while he may have cleared the way for much less daring people to make those points, he was still the guy getting blisters and tennis elbow from swinging a machete.
  
  Nevertheless, Billy the Kid and Jesse James were worthless dirtbags, sorry Rod.


• Today's Penny Arcade reminds me, you know how people like to act like video rental stores are soon going to be extinct, because of stuff like Netflix? Haha. Sure, maybe mainstream stuff like Blockbuster—you can get your wide-release, uh, blockbusters anywhere, and all—but the little weird niche joint is gonna be around a while.
  
  I don't have an account, but I somehow doubt that Netflix has The Dawn Patrol starring Errol Flynn, or Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels, or the 1947 version of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. To name just three movies my sister rented at Casa Video, a weird little video store (chain, albeit with only two "links") in Tucson. "I've never had a problem getting a movie from Netflix"—an argument I see all too often—is very cute. Its unspoken assumption is, "If I am not interested in it, it does not exist."


• Finally, watch the first episode or two of Outlaw Star, and then go watch the pilot of Firefly. Notice anything?
  
  Yeah, I liked River better when her name was Melfina.