How Science Fiction Saved Me From Hell - I Mean Jr. High School

"The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms. If a system injures the intelligence it is bad.If it injures the character it is vicious. If it injures the conscience it is criminal."-- Henri Frederic Amiel

I had a pretty good time in 6th grade, especially the last half. Being only 11 years old, I naively assumed there would be a linear progression. If 6th grade was this good, then 7th grade should be even better. And 8th grade, still better. And so on.

Was I shocked when I got into the 7th grade. One of my friends, raised 300 miles from me, once asked me, “Was 7th grade a kind of hell for you?” Yes, it was, and I couldn’t figure out why. Compared to 6th grade, it was a sheer drop straight down, like one of those fjords in Norway.

Years later, I realized what the problem was: I was unusually intelligent, imaginative and sensitive. So why was I in classes with kids whose IQs were 100? And sometimes maybe less? When I was in 8th grade the boy behind me was 16 years old. He dropped out soon after the school year started.

I had nothing in common with almost all of the kids in class. I didn’t want to be friends with them, and the schoolwork bored me so badly I ended up being one of those boys with low grades and high standardized test scores.

I consider public (read government-run) schools to be a modern version of the Greek torturer Procrustes. He had a bed, and those who were too short to fit, he stretched; those who were too long, he chopped. Everyone fit, but nearly everyone was mutilated.

When I was 12 or 13 I sneaked into my file at school and saw a special notation: “IQ 126.” No genius, but an IQ of 125 is the mean average for doctors and Ph.D.s. Even now I remember the surprise I felt: I had no idea I was so smart. Not a clue. After all, hadn’t all my grade-school teachers put comments on my report cards about what a bad student I was?

Of course, every teacher and administrator in my entire school career completely dropped the ball in my case. They didn’t have a clue, either. They assumed I should make good grades. I didn’t.

In their minds, a high IQ automatically meant good grades. Not once in my entire public school career did any teacher ask, “Why is someone so smart doing so poorly in school? Is there something wrong?”

Something wrong? Yes. I remember one of the greatest shocks I ever got in school was when a guidance counselor told me, “According to your test scores, you could go to Harvard or Yale.” Who, me? The idea had never entered my head.

To me, especially with boys, a high IQ, coupled with imagination and sensitivity and somewhat of a desire to take risks (in other words, me) is a sure-fire recipe for poor grades. The teachers and administrators were supposedly the adults, and I was 12 years old. They didn’t know what they were doing, and I was the one who paid for it.

So what got me through junior high school? One thing: science fiction. The feeling I got from it is called “the sense of wonder,” and the dilemma is that if someone hasn’t experienced it, I cannot explain it to them, and if they have, there’s no need for me to.

To me, that feeling is composed of wonder, amazement, imagination, absorption, and even a kind of love—what the introduction to the original Outer Limits called “the awe and the mystery.” I got that feeling only from science fiction: I did not get it from school, or church, which I ceased attending when I was 12, being bored nearly to tears by it.

Why I got that feeling, I don’t know. Why any boy gets it (and it generally tends to be boys), I don’t know. But whenever I see a kid reading a science fiction book, I know that kid is different, what most people consider an oddball. I don’t. It’s other people I consider oddballs, the ones who lack imagination and intelligence and sensitivity.

The writer Stephen King, writing about growing up, said he considered people without imagination to suffer from “a kind of colorblindness.” I believe the same: to me they are missing out on an infinite world that goes from the beginning to time to the end of it, from one side of the universe to another.

I realize now my disillusionment with junior high forced me into being lopsided: for close to three years I lived almost completely in my imagination. That’s not a good thing. While I did do such early teen things as roller- and ice-skating, and attending an occasional party, for the most part I lived in my imagination. For me, it was an escape from school. Being an escape, it was also a consolation.

I went from being an extroverted and funny 11-year-old to an introverted 12-year-old. I didn’t start to get back on track until 10th grade. My transformation had nothing to do with anything except junior high school. And it happened within a month of starting 7th grade.

I knew I would be considered so weird in school I never mentioned my reading habits. A perfect example of what I would have encountered was when some adults entered my room at home, saw my library of perhaps 100 books, and exclaimed, “Have you really read all those!?” Now if I had had 100 albums, it would have never occurred to them to say, “Have you really listened to all those records!?”

I still remember the names of all the authors I read: Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, A.E. van Vogt. Alfred Bester. I could go on, but you get the picture.

I still have some of the original paperbacks books I had when I was 12: Keith Laumer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy, Clifford D. Simak’s All the Traps of Earth, and Rudyard Kipling’s The Mark of the Beast. I have four copies of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Fighting Man of Mars, the ACE 1963 version with drawings by Roy Krenkel, Jr. I plan on cornering the market.

I was especially fond of Asimov and Ellison, not so much because there was anything special about their writings, but because they wrote about their personal lives. I felt I knew them. Ellison, in a collection of his short stories, wrote an introduction titled, “How Science Fiction Saved Me from a Life of Crime.”

I knew what he meant. “There’s someone out there who’s like me,” I remember thinking, even though he was old enough to be my father. It was like being on a deserted island for years and suddenly seeing fresh footprints.

Things picked up for me in high school, when I was 15 and a sophomore. If I could have gone from 6th grade straight to 10th grade, things would have been fine. Of course, it’s not possible to skip from being 11 to being 15. For me, and I’m sure many others, that’s an unfortunate thing.

In high school there were parties, girls, drinking and drugs. I had a blast, although that blast was always on weekends. We also swam, sailed our Styrofoam Sea Snark sailboat, rode horses and mini-bikes, and in general lived a life that was a cross between Animal House and American Graffiti. Why could this not have happened when I was 12?

What I learned, I taught myself. I learned grammar from the back of a dictionary when I was 12 and 13. I still have that dictionary: “The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, College Edition.” The copyright is from 1950. Yet, in school, I simply could not pay attention in English class. I had to do it myself, at my own pace.

Once thing I noticed, even in those days, is that upon entering high school my reading of science fiction almost ceased. Not totally, but by about 90%. I had other things to do, just as fun. But I still occasionally had that desire to withdraw into myself. It’s a desire I have, even today.

Without a doubt, there is something wrong with our schools, and has been for a long time. This wrongness is so pronounced I have for years believed the public schools should be closed down. When my junior high years consisted of living in my imagination, and my senior high ones consisted of beer and wine and rolling joints, clearly there is a problem. A big problem, one that affected not just me but many other kids.

We need a lot more freedom in schools, and a lot less bureaucracy. That means waving bye to the government, and don’t let the door hit you in your butt on the way out. And don’t come back, ever.

Why are kids in school for 12 years, anyway? What does it take 12 years to learn? Ben Franklin, at the age of 12, was an apprentice making soap and candles. He didn’t turn out too badly, as did neither Thomas Jefferson nor George Washington. Or any of the other Founding Fathers, none of whom spent ages five to 17 in public schools.

When I graduated high school I couldn’t do much that was useful. I could mostly build a house, but that was because my father was a general contractor and I had helped build houses since I was 12. I couldn’t work on a car, something I taught myself when I was 20. For all practical purposes, I could do almost nothing.

What exactly did I or anyone else learn in those 12 years? Nothing, really, besides learning to read and write, and some arithmetic and math. And all that was before 4th grade. My whole time is summed up by the movie, Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, when the kids are staring dully at Ben Stein, as he drones, “Anyone? Anyone?” No one knew the answer, and neither did I.

Something certainly needs to be done for the more intelligent, the more imaginative, and the more sensitive. They need to be scooped up and sent to live with their own kind. As things stand now—and as they stood in my time—they’re just very irregularly shaped pegs that are supposed to fit in some very square holes.

Libertarian Novels

For some reason which I don't understand, the worst writers, like Karl Marx, are leftist, the best, such as Conrad and Dostoevsky, are conservatives, and the anarchist/libertarian ones write science-fiction, fantasy and horror. Even Tolkien, who wrote of a Stateless Shire in his first novel, The Hobbit, described himself as an "anarchist."

As an example, nearly every libertarian I know has been profoundly affected by the writings of the late Robert Heinlein. It wasn't just the libertarian world he portrayed in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, but also the fact he portrayed the characters in nearly all of his stories as competent, can-do people. It's obvious that Tom Clancy was greatly influenced by him, too.

Myself, I found A.E. van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher an eye-opener. It portrayed the importance of an armed citizenry against the eternal depredations of the State. How many other novels written in the '50's were so sympathetic to the importance of the Second Amendment? I can't think of any.

Others were influenced by Eric Frank Russell's story, ". . . And Then There Were None" (part of his book, The Great Explosion), about a society which had discovered a foolproof way to remain completely free and at the same time make itself unconquerable.

Today, there are three well-known libertarian science-fiction writers -- L. Neil Smith, James P. Hogan, and F. Paul Wilson. All have huge followings.

Probably Smith's most famous novel is his first one, The Probability Broach, written in the late '70's but just recently reissued as a superb graphic novel. It's the story of one Win Bear, a detective who ends up in an alternate libertarian universe in which monkeys and dolphins talk, and Ayn Rand was President. And everyone is armed. (Obviously, there's not much crime. As Heinlein pointed out, "An armed society is a polite society.")

James Hogan is not so explicitly libertarian as Smith, but he, too uses the convention of alternate universes to fashion freer worlds than our own. I am especially fond of Bug Park, a "hard science" novel about a young boy and his adventures with tiny, remote-controlled robots. This one, even though for adults, has Heinlein "juvenile" written all over it, and would make a wonderful movie.

Then we have F. Paul Wilson and his "Repairman Jack" novels (The Tomb, Conspiracies). Jack, who is a combination of the Equalizer and Fox Mulder, has decided he wants to live off of the grid, completely away from the prying eyes of the State. He deals only in gold and cash, has no Social Security number, no ID. He also has a flame-thrower, bought from a weapons shop which has the same motto as the one in The Weapon Shops of Isher: "The right to buy weapons is the right to be free." The name of the shop is, of course, Isher.

Jack "fixes" people's problems when they have no one else to turn to. He is equal parts Zorro and the Scarlet Pimpernel. His adventures run from dealing with rakoski -- walking, talking Great Whites who just happen to be human -- to the Men in Black (who really aren't from here).

All of these writers are great fun, and all are illustrations of Tolkien's comment that we have the Primary World (the one in which we live), and then we have Secondary Worlds -- the ones writers create. There are an infinite amount of them.

If a writer has enough skill to create a fully-realized Secondary World, and readers enough imaginative muscle to suspend their disbelief, they can actually "live" for a while in that Secondary World.

What an awful world it would be if there were no Secondary Worlds. It would be the world of 1984, of Brave New World, of Czeslaw Milosz's The Captive Mind.

Certainly, Secondary Worlds are an escape. But they are more than that. As Richard Feynman so perceptively noted, ". . . there are new generations born every day . . . there are great ideas developed in the history of man, and these ideas do not last unless they are passed purposely and clearly from generation to generation."

It is through stories -- through those Secondary Worlds --that those ideas are passed from generation to generation. Without those Secondary, imaginative worlds, you can start saying goodbye to the collected wisdom of humanity, passed from old to young. As Richard Weaver wrote in his book of the same title, Ideas Have Consequences.

One of the curious differences between the Primary World and Secondary Worlds is that the first is inherently imperfect (in religious terms, "fallen"), while Secondary Worlds are not necessarily. What this does is give the readers an idea of what better worlds might be like, in the safety of their imaginations.

Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard, for two examples, spent their lives imagining fully-realized libertarian worlds, and wrote about them in the hope others would read of them and be convinced of the truth of their positions. Both were showing people better worlds.

A libertarian world, for example, is as close to an ideal world as there can be. However, being an ideal world, it doesn't (as of yet) exist totally in the real world. It does exist in bits and pieces in reality. It is a Secondary World that someday might be completely implemented in the Primary World.

All of the aforementioned writers, and their books, are about what America could have been, and what it should be. What the world should be. The books are about the writers and readers using their imaginations to see what the world would be like if the switches were set right, ones set wrong a long time ago.

Such things would be all for the good, for everyone.

The Outlaw Josey Wales: "Doin' Right Ain't Got No End"

When I was in college I lived in an old two-story frame house, built in the 1890s. It was a co-ed house with 13 people in it, and ha ha! I was the only renter who had a room to himself! Because I got there first, before everyone else, that's how! Downstairs was the family room, or living room, or community room, or throw-all-the-beer-cans-in-it room, or whatever you want to call it. It came with a TV, which finally disappeared into some cokehead's car and was never seen again.

The year that we had the TV, it brought in three things: the only broadcast channel in town, which had a newscaster who would change his coat when he went from news to sports; another channel from 35 miles away, and a cable channel from who knows where. I think it might have been Chicago, and don't ask me how we got it. This was a good ten years before everyone else got cable, and I didn't have a clue how it worked. It was just there.

The whole setup was pretty pitiful, which was probably the reason we drank so much. Or maybe it was because we were in college, and that's what college kids do instead of studying, which I didn't do in high school or middle school, and I sure wasn't going to start in college. So while drinking we watched that cable channel, which for a year did nothing except play the same two movies, over and over: The Ultimate Warrior, with Yul Brenner, and The Outlaw Josey Wales, with Clint Eastwood. Brenner, who had no hair at all, was offset by Eastwood, who looked like the inside of a horsehair mattress.

My roommates and I saw those two movies so many times (perhaps 50) we memorized the scenes and the dialog ("Right here is where Josey plugs two guys and spits tobacco juice on one's forehead"). Even though you might think we got bored with just two movies, we never did. It was a ritual, a rather comforting one, to watch and rewatch those movies. Especially, in my case, with Josey Wales, which even at the age of 21, I realized was a great film. It was one of the first movies I bought, when they began to appear on tape. I still have it. I haven't bothered to upgrade to DVD yet.

Certain scenes and dialog are more vivid in my memories than others, although all the scenes are permanently bound in my brain. Someday I might end up being 99 years old and not knowing what I had for breakfast, but I'll still be able to tell you what a Missouri Boat Ride is ("BLAM!"). One scene that is stuck is the speech Wales gives to the Indian, Ten Bears, who's wondering if he should rub out Wales and everyone with him:

Josey: Governments don't live together. People live together. Governments don't give you a fair word or a fair fight. I've come here to give you either one. Or get either one from you... I'm saying that men can live together without butchering one another...

Ten Bears: It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double-tongues.

Governments are chiefed by the double-tongues." A world of truth in seven words. They should be taught in kindergarten, engraved on stone tablets in town squares! They should be added to the Bible, taught in church!

Another scene that has stayed with me is the discussion between Fletcher and the mass-murdering leader of the Kansas Redlegs, Terrill, who is the Union officer who killed Wales' family -- even though neither Josey nor his family ever owned slaves. Both of them are hunting Josey, who, after his tragedy, turned Missouri Confederate (I suspect from the Ozarks, because I hang out in that area and know what it's like):

Fletcher: We get [kill] Josey Wales and it ends.

Terrill: Doin' right ain't got no end.

"Doin' right ain't got no end." That cold-blooded sentence is the motto of every tyrant -- indeed of most rulers -- in the world. That belief is ancient: both Jesus and Aesop noticed that tyrants always call themselves benefactors. As it is with rulers (who are the most prolific killers of all), it is with murderers: all must justify what they do, rationalize it to themselves. Murderers do their crimes for their own selves; rulers always claim it is for the greater good. "I'm from the government," goes the old but scarily true joke, "and I'm here to help you." You may think you are, but, no, you're not!

The story of The Outlaw Josey Wales is a simple but well-known one: a man who wishes to live peaceably with his family sees them slaughtered by agents of the government. So he seeks violent revenge. (By the way, does anyone in the government understand how that eternal truth applies to Iraq? Hello? Hello? Anyone?)

Here I inject an aside into the Josey Wales story. His Celtic last name has the same root as the names "Welsh," "Walsh," and "Wallace": "wealh," originally meaning "foreigner," and later, to the English, signifying "slave" or "serf." You'll soon see what this means.

There are three other movies I admire that tell the same story as The Outlaw Josey Wales: two of Mel Gibson's films, Braveheart and The Patriot, and the Liam Neeson vehicle, Rob Roy. All have the same story: peaceable men who have their families and lands attacked and taken from by those from the government. The result? Murderous revenge, of course. It always is. It's a law written on the human heart.

There is something else all four films have in common: they tell the story of the conflict between the English and the Scots/Irish/Welsh. In Braveheart the attempted English genocide of the Scots is shown; in Rob Roy it's the Irish; and in the case of The Patriot and The Outlaw Josey Wales that conflict has been mapped onto the United States, especially, in the case of Josey, as it showed in the War Between the States. (This same English/Celt conflict transferred onto the U.S. as the North/South conflict is also the basis of what is probably the Great American Novel: Gone With the Wind.

Each film also very clearly zeroes in on the villain: the English. In the United States, these people, roughly speaking, transformed themselves into meddling, murdering East Coast Ivy League WASP Puritan Imperial Yankees Neoconservatives (yeah, I know it's a mouthful, but it's a fun mouthful, ain't it?) They're still around today, and are not only still meddling in the United States, but have, since their invasion of the Philippines in 1898, expanded their meddling throughout the world. Their motto: doin' right ain't got no end. No matter how many people die, no matter how much is destroyed.

That motto is how the world ends up with the hallucinations of someone like Richard Perle, who, while not a WASP, is the Zionist traitor version of it, said of Iraq, "If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now." Say what?

People like him believe that the Josey Wales of the world would offer a drink to their invaders for "liberating" them, or the women would show them their breasts and throw flowers at them. Uh huh.

Since two of the films have been made by Mel Gibson (which is a Scottish name), I'd say it's pretty clear that Gibson does not have a high opinion of the English, especially since, being Catholic, I'm sure he knows about how Cromwell (who styled himself "Lord Protector") caused the deaths or exile of up to one-third of the Irish population (most of them Catholic), and of the Lowland Clearances in Scotland, when many, many people were burned out of their homes, including mine own ancestors (somebody owes me a lot of money and land, and a great big apology). Such butchery and theft was, of course, lauded as "progress," as it always is.

Cromwell was the first and only military dictator in England, and after his death he was treated as a traitor by his own people! -- his miserable but unfortunately dead body was dug up and drawn and quartered. Boy, that is a lot of dislike ain't it? No that's not right -- it's downright hatred. Even today, he is hated in Ireland, and no wonder -- he bumped off or kicked out one-third of the population.

As Jimmy Cantrell asserts: “...the English Empire began not around the globe but with Anglo-Saxons slaughtering Celts [featuring massacres of civilians that were all but unheard of in European warfare] and stealing all their wealth, the Yankee Empire began with the slaughtering of Southerners and the purloining of almost all Southern wealth.” Wealh, remember?

Propaganda has taught us the English are our allies, and the Germans, who are supposed to be genetically genocidal, are not (here's food for thought: about 90% of English are Anglo-Saxon, i.e. German). Silly me to believe that not only is England not our ally, but that no country is. The English were just as guilty as the Germans in World War I and World War II, probably because both are blood brothers joined bloodily, Siamese-twin-like, at the hip.

Most people don't know it, but it was the English who invented the concentration camp, during the Boer War, a war in which they burned Boer farms (sound familiar?) and murdered more women and children in the camps that Boer soldiers in combat (all of whom were shot instead of being taken prisoner).

The U.S. came in on the side of England in World War I (when the combatants were exhausted and ready to quit) and won the peace, a peace which imposed crushing reparations on Germany. There's no fight like a family fight, huh?

Those reparations led to WW II. We came in on the side of the English, again against the Germans, and this time delivered the whole of Christian Eastern Europe to atheist Communist Russia, for over 50 years. What did we get out of all this? Hundreds of thousands of casualties, and just about nothing else except for some blather about "the Greatest Generation."

I consider movies to be modern-day myths, and like all great myths, they tell us great truths. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth ten million. The four movies I've just listed tell us that when governments (which always call themselves protectors) slaughter families and steal land (for the greater good, of course), the outrages are never forgotten, even after several hundred years, and, invariably, bloody revenge is sought, as surely as night follows day. There are no "cakewalks," no showers of flowers, no beckoning naked grateful babes, no bottles of booze offered. Just death and destruction.

Countries don't have friends, just shifting alliances. Anyone who thinks otherwise is as deluded as Richard Perle listening for those non-existent children singing to him.

What's that old saying? "With no justice, there will be no peace"? It's true, no matter how many centuries -- or millennia -- pass.

Broken Windows, Hot Dogs and the Social Order

It was James Q. Wilson who championed what has become known as "the Broken Window theory." He, along with the police and social psychologists, noticed that a broken window in a building, unless repaired, led to the rest of the windows being broken. It's verification of the old saying, "Give them an inch and they'll take a mile." When police began to use the Broken Window theory – taking care of small crimes like begging and drunkenness – the major crimes started dropping.

I first noticed this when I was a teenager in my hometown, which has about 40,000 people. The police at that time were not hampered by a lot of PC laws. They also did a lot of "informal" policing, like pulling us over and dumping out our beer and wine in front of us. Anything else they found they dumped out of the baggies and scattered to the four winds. That was a lot of money lost when you worked at McDonald's or a bowling alley. Then they told us, "First warning. Next time, we take you home and tell your parents." That did it; we realized there are things you do in public – and things you do in private. All of us grew up to be chemists and lawyers and newspaper editors.

We found consequences were immediate. No arrests, no being taken in, no going to trial three months later. However, the third time always resulted in an arrest. These were very, very rare, and always the dumb kids who usually ended up being criminals anyway. And in high school, didn't everyone know who the bad kids were without anyone telling them?

At that time the streets in my hometown were safe to walk at any time of night. Even today, they still are. And the cops haven't changed, except now most of them (including the police chief) are ones I went to high school with.

Once, several years ago, as I was getting into my car, some gangbanger wannabe, who had obviously wandered in from out of town and had no idea whatsoever what city he was in, tried to strongarm me in a parking lot. I chased him around the lot for 15 to 20 seconds in my Caprice. It was pretty amusing to watch him jump out of the way. Then I got the cops, who couldn't find him.

They did have me look at mugshots. He wasn't among them, which meant he had never been arrested in my town. If I had identified him, he would have been taken in, knocked around, and told, "If we ever catch you in this town again, next time we won't be so nice."

The cop who I found was one I have known since kindergarten. He doesn't remember that I and another kid launched a wooden block across the room and bloodied his forehead. For the best, probably.

When I told him I had chased this guy around the lot with my car, he didn't even blink an eye. He did comment, "If I had been you, I would have beat the fuck out of him." Which was a way of saying, "If you had hurt him, and claimed self-defense, nothing would have happened to you."

He, and the police chief, and all the rest of the cops, were raised in my hometown, and still live there. The citizens know who they are, and they know the citizens. It was the same in high school. The police used to give me rides when they saw me hitchhiking.

Yet, years later, when I moved seven miles away, to a city with half-a-million people, it was as if I had moved to a different world. The police force was ten times bigger, but not even one-quarter as good.

The cops didn't know the citizens. They didn't walk foot-patrols. They were more interested in running speed-traps, conning themselves they were doing real police work, and filling city coffers. And probably worst of all, they ignored minor crimes.

I used to live in an apartment a few years ago. One morning, as I was leaving for work, I heard a screeching sound from across the street. When I looked in the direction of the sound, I saw a car make a U-turn, go up on the curb, and crash headfirst into a tree.

So, of course, I stopped to watch, wondering what was going on. And out of this car pops a 250-pound bronto-sapien of a woman, who starts shrieking in my direction and heading towards me. Hey, lady, what did I do to you?

Then I noticed she was heading toward some guy on the sidewalk, whom I had not noticed at first. He weighed about 125 pounds, and was so skinny I wondered how his pants stayed up because he had no butt. He was into that pants-half-way-down-the-ass thing.

Since she was obviously going to smush this guy, he runs up by my door, with her in hot pursuit. "Hey, look," I tell both of them, "This is private property, so get off or I'm going to call the police."

It was like I wasn't even there. I might as well have been talking to two cats fighting. Then, right in front of me, they start swapping punches! Only they were missing each other by two feet. It reminded me of the scene in the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World where Terry Thomas and Milton Berle get into a ten-minute fight and can't damage each other. In one scene Berle is swinging mightily at Thomas and missing him by a foot. Step-swing-oof! Step-swing-oof!

I was looking at Antwon and LaShonda imitating Milton Berle and Terry Thomas! That's when I began to get The Twilight Zone feeling.

Since they weren't listening to me, my next thought was to run upstairs, get my bat and smack 'em. It's aluminum, which makes a pleasant melodious bonging sound on the head. Wood makes an unpleasant cracking sound and has a tendency to fracture. I'm sure this would have amused an elderly couple driving by. ("Oh look, Herm, that guy is beating that fat negro lady and that skinny negro man with a baseball bat." "Maybe we should call the police, Mabel." Both look at each other for a second and burst into, "HAHAHAHA!")

Then, before I have a chance to do anything else, this guy runs inside the front door of my apartment building and locks it. He's locked me out of my own apartment building. By this time I'm starting to get a little angry.

What does he do next? Through the glass in the door I see him throw up a bunch of half-digested hotdogs. Who eats hotdogs for breakfast?

That's it; now I'm mad! "I'm calling the police!" I yell at them. I unlock the door, and the hell if she spins this guy around like a cheerleader's baton! I don't care!

He darts out and around the building with Buffalo Girl after him. Apparently he hops the fence into my back yard, because several seconds later here she comes around to the front again, unable to get up enough speed to plow the fence down.

Chug-chug-chug she goes by me and around the other side to where the entrance to my backyard is. Then upstairs I go to dial 911. "Do they live there?" the retard on the other end asks me. "No," I tell her, "she crashed her car into a tree, they're fighting in my frontyard, and he PUKED HOTDOGS ALL OVER MY LANDING!!"

"We'll send somebody there," she tells me. Oh, really, is that so? Thank you so very much. I head out my door and run into my neighbor across the hall. "I called 911," I tell her. "So did I," she tells me.

Then I'm out in the frontyard, and here comes twigboy with his bisonic girlfriend following him across the frontyard again and then into the neighbor's yard, then back into mine, all the while yelling and screaming at each other. I have no idea what they're shrieking. It's all in Ebonics.

"GET OUT OF HERE!!!" I yell again. No response; I've moved from The Twilight Zone straight into Outer Limits. "The Zanti Misfits," that's it! They're aliens sent here to torture me to madness!

Then they're in the frontyard swapping punches again! And still missing each other!

Where's that cop? Back upstairs I go – avoiding the hotdogs – and I dial 911 again. "Please send some cops out here," I beg. "They're on their way," the double-plus retard promises me. Back in the hall I run across my neighbor again. "I called 911 again," I tell her. "So did I," she responds. Four calls!

Out in the frontyard I find both these heinous beasts are gone. But when I look down the street, I see the Blob From Hell sitting in her car around the corner, probably waiting for a chance to mow down her scrawny boyfriend's nonexistent butt.

Then a police car rolls up. No lights, no siren, nothing. Just kind of casually rolls up. And who gets out? Some fat female cop! She blobs her way up to me. By this time my neighbor is in the front yard.

"...and...and then...crash...puke...fight...fat...ugly...stupid," I babble, then point to the car, as does my neighbor. What does the car do? It starts and pulls away! "Go get 'em!" I yell.

The cop looks at the car like a dog watching a yo-yo. "That's a good girl!" I think. "Car! Chase!"

"Well, it looks like it's all over now," this got-in-on-lowered-standards oinker tells us. And people wonder why I hate Political Correctness! I gape at her. I look at my neighbor. She's also gaping at the cop.

Damaging city property, fighting, creating a nuisance, disorderly conduct, leaving the scene of a wreck, trespassing, PUKING UP HOTDOGS...and who knows what else! And what does this brainless cop tell us? "Well, it looks like it's all over now."

Then she gets in her police car and leaves. If someone had taken a picture of me, it would have been a classic: shoulders slumped, mouth hanging open in disbelief, one hand pointing limply at the now-disappeared perp in the car.

Then I think about the hotdogs. "I have to go to work," I tell my neighbor. "I'll clean it up," she tells me.

This is an example of horrible policing. It's not putting a stop to these kinds of crimes that lead to bigger, and worse, crimes. And guess what? In that neighborhood it wasn't particularly safe to walk around at night. Who woulda thunk it?

The Empire in Space

Popular culture should never be ignored. Shakespeare during his day was popular culture. Today, he's considered the greatest writer in the English language.

These days, the two biggest media for popular culture are TV and the movies. As all art does, they reflect life. Sometimes, they predict it.

One little-known and underrated movie that fits this pattern is Soldier, starring the also underrated Kurt Russell. What makes this movie, which appear to be little more than Grade B action/adventure in space, so special?

It's about Empire, and the soldiers it uses to advance itself. This time, it's not just on Earth, but in far space. Since we've always had empires on earth, will we have them in space? Perhaps? Certainly?

The movie, which is set in a not-very-far future, portrays Russell as Sergeant Todd, a genetically engineered, nearly mute soldier. He can talk, but has little to say. I doubt he says 20 words in the film, although his learning what feelings are, portrayed through his expressions and body language, is poignant. Once, sitting alone around a fire, tears come to his eyes, probably for the first time in his life. Another time, asked what it's like to be a soldier, he can barely answer, "Fear. . .discipline."

There is a scene early in the movie in which a list of battles are scrolling in the background. One reads, "Tannhauser's Gate." This is an allusion to the movie, Blade Runner, which is about artificially created humans known as replicants. The implication is that Soldier, set even farther in the future than Blade Runner, also breeds artificial humans as soldiers. Sergeant Todd is one of them. Ominously, he is part of the "Adam Project" – creating the new man, one brutal, violent, conscienceless.

Raised from a child to be a merciless killing machine, Russell finds himself made obsolete when a new set of superior genetically-engineered soldiers shows up. After losing a battle to one of them, Caine (played by Jason Lee Scott), Todd is thought dead, and dumped with the garbage on a "waste disposal" planet.

There, he is found by a rag-tag group of marooned humans. At first accepted by them, Todd finds he has feelings buried in him he did not know were there. For the first time in his life, he has a family. The message is that a prerequisite for killing machines is to have no feelings or family.

As Todd heals, he starts to frighten everyone, and they ask him to leave. That is when he ends up around the fire with tears in his eyes. For the first time in his life, he has found a family and community, but terrifies them with his potential for violence. However, guilt forces the community to invite him back.

Meanwhile, the Empire is busy testing new weapons. Where does it decide to test them? On the waste disposal planet. The parallels to large powerful countries that attack smaller, weaker countries, and in doing so tests it new weapons, is clear.

This time, though, Todd has something worth fighting for.

This is not a perfect movie. Indeed, it'a B-movie masquerading as an A one. The special effects are rather cheap; the battle tanks appear to be cars with hollow plywood shells. And without Russell, it wouldn't be worth seeing. But his journey from emotionless killer to a man who discovers family and community, is what makes the movie.

As mentioned, there are other messages hidden in this film. Empire always expands itself though the military; it will always attack the defenseless, trying out new weapons on them; and it wants its soldiers to be emotionless killing machines, without mercy or remorse. And if it can, it will use science to create them. And that is something to keep in mind – how far will the State go in altering humans to create what it wants in soldiers?

One major flaw in the movie's portrayal of Empire is it does not point out it almost always uses as a justification for its depredations the excuse that it is being a benefactor to those attacked.

The film is also about the lust for power, and how it degrades. The soldiers are not bad people; indeed in some ways they are admirable. Gary Busey, as a commander, especially illustrates this. He does care about his men. On the other hand, the political types are portrayed as utterly despicable, people only interested in power, unconcerned with whom they murder.

The movie, being essentially a high-class B-movie, is nothing new. It's derivative of Blade Runner, The Terminator, and First Blood, to mention three. But many of those who have seen it find it stays with them. It is not a great film, but it doesn't pretend to be. But for those who look, there are some very important messages here about the expansion of empire, and the eternal fight between Society and the State, and how the latter will always try to absorb, indeed destroy, the first.

All You Need is Edgar Rice Burroughs

"The worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs are never-never lands, dream worlds where virtue and courage win honor and beauty, where evil can be identified and confronted, and despite all odds defeated..." - Richard Lupoff

I never needed any self-help books about men being from Mars and women from Venus, or how I learned everything I needed to know in kindergarten. All I ever needed was Edgar Rice Burroughs, whom I encountered when I was 11. I have never been the same since.

Burroughs, who unfortunately isn't really that well-known anymore, is best-known as the creator of Tarzan (who in the books spoke as if he was quoting Shakespeare, a far cry from the "me Tarzan, you Jane" in the movies). But in his day ERB (as he is commonly known) was as popular as Stephen King is now, and was, and still is, hugely influential. Carl Sagan, for example, credited him with interesting him in space exploration and science.

Writers such as F. Paul Wilson, Philip Jos� Farmer and John Norman have been influenced by Burroughs' novels about Tarzan, Barsoom (Mars), Pellucidar (the inhabited interior of the Earth) and Venus. Probably most writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror have been influenced by him.

Perhaps the first thing I noticed about Burroughs is that, much like Robert Heinlein, none of his women characters are victims. And he was writing in the early 1900's. Were he alive today, I suspect he would hold Stalinist taterheads like Betty Friedan and Andrea Dworkin in contempt. Such whiney, self-pitying women, who think everything would be just fine if society was destroyed (and men's characters, too) and remade according to the crackpot fantasies infesting their heads, can't even begin to compare with a brave, smart, resourceful woman like Tavia in A Fighting Man of Mars, who hacked off the arms of a couple of 15-feet-tall six-armed Martian apes.

Not only were Burroughs' women not victims, they were handy not only with swords but also with pistols, although they were "radium" pistols, a weapon whose workings still puzzle me. Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Mars, once skewered a villain several times, then she kicked his worthless carcass over a cliff. Maybe Barsoomian females did give birth by laying eggs, but they were no chickens.

Yet, Burroughs' women were still feminine. There was no competition with men, and each sex got along just fine with the other. The main reason, I'm sure, is that the Barsoomian State didn't interfere in the relationships between the sexes, and so they fell into the natural, proper ones.

At 11 I was immensely impressed by these saber-wielding, pistol-blasting heroines. I suspect a lot of guys were, and are. A woman I know wrote one article about how she was planning on shooting a pistol for the first time, and got 300 emails from guys willing to instruct her. So, girls, if you want to be popular, become proficient with a firearm. Learning to hurl a dagger is not such a bad idea, either. Men will get on their knees and salaam before you the way Wayne and Garth did before Alice Cooper.

Neither were the women always beautiful, the way they invariably are in the movies. Tavia was described as "boyish," and in the long run the hero, Tan Hadron, preferred her to the beautiful but haughty and shallow Sanoma Tora. Although, to be honest, on the covers of most of the books the physiques of both the men and women look as if they've been inflated with an air hose. But then, the publishers were trying to sell copies to boys in their early teens.

The second thing I learned is that I was being conned in school. The Warlord of Mars was the Earthman John Carter, a southerner from Virginia who had fought in the Civil War (don't ask me how he got on Mars). Hey, wait a minute � I had been taught in school the South was an ignoble, maybe even evil society that fought a long, bloody war to defend slavery. Yet Carter was a noble and honorable man, protector of the oppressed, upholder of justice. Carter was always against slavery and oppression. Who was I supposed to believe? What I was taught in the government-run prison/school I despised, or a writer who bought me fascination and awe?

Burroughs, like Hemingway, was originally from the heavily residential Oak Park, a medium-sized suburb stuck right up against Chicago. I've been there several times. Apparently he found a better area to write about than the one he was from.

The third thing I learned is that maybe kings and queens are better than democracy. Barsoom was ruled � and ruled justly � by John Carter and Dejah Thoris. They barely appeared to rule at all. I really don't remember a list of laws in any of Burroughs' novels, other than the simple ones we all know � you don't murder, you don't steal. Otherwise, you could do as you pleased.

But there's not a word in any of his novels about mob rule. Most of them read as if they could have been partly based on Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Democracy: the God that Failed. In fact, Burroughs doesn't have a good word to say about mobs. In The Gods of Mars he does a hatchet-job on the blind fanatical mobs that fall for that combination of the State, corrupt religion, and Big Business.

What else? There are at least two kinds of villains. The least bad are the sniveling, back-stabbing, lying cowards who are just great at running their mouths but have nothing to back it up. I guess junior high existed during Burroughs' school years, too.

The worst villains, however, are those who want to conquer and rule the world. Burroughs portrayed such people as practically insane with the lust for power. They're the ones who wanted to impose a State on all of Barsoom, and con armies into fighting for them. And in Burroughs' worlds, they always failed, just as in do in our world, although often at a horrendous cost in slaughter and destruction and misery.

Burroughs' worlds are not a libertarian paradise. His novels are basically for boys 11 to 14 years old. They're filled with sword fights and big apes with fangs (and big spiders with fangs, too). But there's not a good word in any of his novels for the State, or for politics, or for politicians, or corrupt religion. There is, however, true love between men and women as one of the highest values, and the desire for justice and freedom.

Burroughs wasn't the most stylish writer in the world. His style was workman-like more than anything else. But he could tell a heck of a story, a far better one than current writers who are far more stylish than he was. If I had my way, I'd close down the government schools, salt the ground (and pepper the teachers), then open up private ones and create a better world by teaching my hero, ERB.

Homer America

There is a part of me that sees the U.S. as "Homer America." As in "Homer Simpson." There is precedence for this name change: Saudi Arabia is named after the tribe which conquered the other local tribes and then named the whole place – originally Arabia – after themselves. This is exactly the same as if I conquered the U.S., called it "Wallace America," then renamed my relatives and myself as "royalty" and gave ourselves titles like "prince" and "princess." Although Homer America is a much better place to live than Saudi Arabia. And Wallace America would be the best place to live of all.

Homer is a particularly American archetype, just as Doug and Bob McKenzie could only be a Canadian one. I don't see anything similar to the Homer in Greek mythology, but he does exist in the Judeo-Christian tradition, as a modern-day Adam (which means "Man").

Homer is good-natured, but stupid, ignorant, loud and obnoxious. He means well, but fouls up everything he does. He blames his problems on others, but every once in a while he has moments of self-awareness in which he realizes he is his worst enemy. His worst sin appears to be that of Intellectual Sloth (eyes rolled up toward cranium: "Brain, I know that you and I don't get along very well..."). If you were to take a million Americans, boil them down, then take the concentrate and morph it into a cartoon character, you'd have Homer. That is why he is such a uniquely American archetype. I think this is why he is so popular: the Homer in all of us resonates with the Homer onscreen.

Homer has his moments, but overall he is not likeable. He's not evil, just stupid (which reminds me of the comment by Spider Robinson and Robert A. Heinlein: "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity"). Homer is funny in fantasy, but like a lot of things which are funny while unreal, he'd be a horror in real life. Laughing at him allows us to defuse the fact he is a catastrophic symbol of ourselves.

Homer fits the archetype of Adam because he unconsciously blames his problems on other people. This is what Adam did when he blamed Eve for his transgressions. Homer, however, in his brief periods of self-awareness (always heralded by the now-classic "Doh!"), realizes he is at fault. He goes from an unconscious scapegoating to a conscious acceptance of self-responsibility, however transient.

This moving from unconscious scapegoating to conscious acceptance of self-responsibility is why I believe the story of the Garden of Eden to be the most powerful of all. The psychiatrist M. Scott Peck quite correctly called scapegoating "the genesis of human evil." And Homer, proving him right, has an almost irresistible impulse to blame his problems on everyone but himself.

I've often wondered if Adam had only gone, "Doh!" and accepted responsibility instead of blaming Eve (and had Eve not blamed the Serpent), then God might have said, "Well, okay, you can stay." In some versions of the story, Adam and Eve's scapegoating, and their denial of their responsibility, is what gets them kicked out of the Garden.

Since each of us has an Inner Homer, we are imperfect. In traditional religious terms, we are "fallen." Since everyone in The Simpsons is imperfect, the program can be considered in some ways to be a "true" conservative show, since true conservatives know that no one is perfect. This, of course, includes everyone in the government, which is why Chief Wiggins made the classic comment: "I didn't say the government couldn't hurt you. I said it couldn't protect you."

Since the program is very tolerant of everyone (and their foibles), it's also quite libertarian. Libertarian conservative, you could say. Except for Lisa, who in her youth and foolishness is a liberal. She's probably an example of that old saying, "He who is not a liberal at 20 has no heart, and if not a conservative at 40, no head."

Did the creators of Homer know what they were doing when they projected an aspect of the national psyche into this character? I have no idea. Like many artists, they tend to be, as Ezra Pound commented, "the antenna of the race." They can often see how things are (and are going to be) more clearly than most people, even if they can't explain how they know it.

Since Homer is a projection of our selves, he is Mass Man. The mean average IQ is 100, which is about what Homer's appears to be. And the more Americans you gather into a group, the closer the IQ drops to 100. This is one of the reasons I think the Essence of One Million Americans is Homer. Whenever you see some fat, yelling, shirtless, body-painted drunk at a sports event, you're seeing the Doh! made Flesh.

One problem for America is that this concentrated Homer archetype is what votes. Hence, Homer America. This is why democracy doesn't work, and why we get the politicians we do. Homer is definitely not part of Albert Jay Nock's aristocratic and educated Remnant. For that matter, neither are politicians.

Unfortunately, the bigger the group of politicians, the more they become Homerized, just like the average citizens. This is a great example of why government should be as small as possible. The bigger it gets, the more Homeresque it gets.

The rest of the world, sadly, tends to see the U.S. as Homer: big, good-natured, somewhat stupid and ignorant, loud and obnoxious, meaning well, but screwing up everything it gets involved in. And every once in a while, the U.S. has its moments of lucidity in which it realizes what it's doing.

The U.S. and the average American weren't like this in the recent past. TV fathers like Homer didn't exist until the '90s. In the '50s and '60s they were Ward Cleaver and Andy Taylor. And the US was a lot more respected by foreigners than it is now.

If The Simpsons had been on the air in the '50s and '60s, would it have survived? I doubt it. It's too insulting to most people. The closest to The Simpsons was The Flintstones, and Fred wasn't a couch-potato quasi-drunk like Homer.

As funny as The Simpsons is, it certainly is quite a drop for the U.S. and fathers to go from Andy Taylor to Homer.

What Homer may show is that the greatest sin of Americans is Intellectual Sloth. This makes a great deal of sense, they are consisting stumbling into all kinds of world catastrophes. A lot of Americans are afflicted with Intellectual Sloth of Homerian proportions.

What has caused this change? I'm not exactly sure, but I suspect the precipitous decline in education has something to do with it. This is why it is significant that Homer is ignorant and his worst sin is that of Intellectual Sloth.

Homer shows us at least four things: people are imperfect; they no longer understand (if they ever did) the death and destruction that unconscious scapegoating can lead to; that democracy is an awful form of government; and that the public schools should be closed down. The idea of Homer's hometown of Springfield growing like the Blob until it encompasses the U.S. is not a pleasant thought, no more than the idea of public schooling engulfing the country is pleasant.

Homer can be considered a warning to America: this is what we have become. And while he's been defanged by being turned into a cartoon, when he moves into reality, catastrophes happen. I shudder to think of the US being run by Homer.

Oh, no, wait...