I’m relatively new to geopolitical study. Most o’ my life, I honored what I thought was the social contract- limited myself to less demanding careers so I could do my real life’s work making healthy happy home for my men and children. See, I got the idea somewhere that making moral, spiritually/emotionally/mentally/physically healthy people was understood to be my role in society... my contribution to its highest good, and that
others were tasked with the oversight and application of political and defense matters. I was incredibly good at my job, and assumed the others were likewise exceptional at theirs.
Once I buried my family and faced the spectre o’ half my life w/o em, I looked around for some other, completely different, focus for my energy, to give me a time for healing, and took up learning of the Great Game and how it’s been played. Only then did I realize that I’d abdicated my responsibility and that
each and every one of us need keep an eagle eye on our institutions,
always, or else run the risk of the ruin we now see before us.
Even though I’m a novice, and mostly self-taught, I think it’s clear that we are IN ww3 already. I don’t watch TV or use MSM, but even limiting myself to source material and a few voice whom I respect and trust, that much seems clear. I’ve watched the shifting alliances, the defense budgets ballooning all across the globe, country after country “suddenly” reworking it’s defense principles to include more robust actions, reworking their nuclear permissions and protocols, defense contractors’ old stock flying off the shelves while their new monsters are being field tested and demand for their products sky rocket, while they all ramp up their production capacities and all the countries suddenly doubling down on their social programs to reverse the tide of declining birth rates, and
the writing on the wall seems unmistakable.
I don’t know if saying no- declining to participate= will work. I’ve often suggested- earlier in the game, particularly- that instead o’ this impotent complaining from behind the comfort of our screens, we should try a tienamens square incident of our own. Take our older, worn bodies en masse to our “betters” and tell em fine, you want us dead? Skip the convoluted machinations of the shots, and the wars, the destruction of our economies, businesses, food supplies, and mental/emotional health. Here we are, take us now, or we take you to the fair trials, and then the accommodations at LV, that you’ve earned.
You’ve demonized us, legalized slapping labels upon we innocent men/women and granted yourselves ::spit:: the “legal rights” to kill us w/o due process... So, here. Now. In front o’ God and the cameras and everyone, do it.
I don’t believe it would work, as the fear of bad press and public opinion is no longer much of a factor with them. Still, it seems clear that fixing this fubar is going to require some bleeding, crying and dying. The sooner we realize we can’t all hunker down in safety and wait for that other guy to do those things for us, the sooner we can start to do the real work that is in front of us.
Which circles back to the reason your sheriff was also a favorite character of mine. He’s the men (and women!) that I grew up knowing, living amongst and loving. Folks with enough fortitude and character to see what was wrong and what needed to be done to make it right, then got busy gettin' er done. I miss those people, and it seems, with every outrage by our global governments that is met with acquiescence, that these days they are only found in the graveyards and pages o’ novels such as yours.
Hopefully there are many many o’ em still this side o’ the veil, working a plan, like the men in your novel, to right these wrongs and help us get back on course. I don’t hear their voices lifted in the discourse though, the public square seems full o’ the same tired, self serving substandard nonsense as that which got us here in the first place. :: shrug :: but, at least, we have voices in our stories that are lifted up, saying and doing the hard, but correct, words/deeds.
Ah, in town where snow fall and solar activity seems to have less impact on internet...
Wouldn't trade it for anything though.
Jane was one of the characters that surprised me as I wrote in terms of significance, the other was the Sheriff. He started out as a very minor character actually and was derived from a short story that I wrote years ago.
One of the reasons I was drawn to the story of the Powers cabin shootout and why I wanted to wrap a modern novel around it was that I really see us sliding inevitably toward a new global war. I spent 15 years in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and worse, just as a filthy contractor. But what I experienced showed me that broader war will be terrible no matter how they dress it up, even if it stays conventional.
Occasionally some one like Jeff Power in 1917 stands up and says no. If a whole community stands up and says no, what happens? Is the coming war really necessary? Recruiting numbers are terribly low right now, a draft will be necessary for a major conflict. And with everyone being equal, it will be time to start drafting women, right?
I'm not smart enough to have a lot of answers, but I'm at least smart enough to have an awful lot of questions. Shouldn't we be asking these things now, before we start sending sons and daughters off to war yet again?
