Doleful Creatures, Trying Again

I'm back to editing Doleful Creatures after a hiatus I hope will help me see the story with fresh eyes. I have to keep tinkering with the opening and then make sure the book delivers what's promised. Here's another stab:

A drip, a drip, a drip of water.

Water falling from the sky.

Clouds roll in and cap the Earth,

Obscuring yonder mountains high.

The cap, it falls to form a prison.

A prison which has no gates to open.

Those inside know not the prison,

Only of the promise broken.

The prisoners have no eyes to see.

No eyes, no sight to part the darkness.

For dawn they wait, with young ones crying,

For dawn they wait, and hearts fail hopeless.

            The water dripped on Jarrod’s head. And with each drip, he heard a whisper.

            Drip, the voice of an otter.

            Drip, the cry of a wolf.

            Drip, bubbles blown by a fish.

            He opened his eyes in the dark. The dark sucked at his eyes as he blinked in the rain. He opened his eyes wider and the darkness sucked at them. There was no light. No light of the moon, no light of the stars. Even the feeble lights of the farm nearby were obscured by rain and branches and leaves and mist.

            A rustling, heard over the patter of rain. A snaky hiss, scales sliding over the rocks. Clicks of grabbing claws and, here and there, whiffs of foul, black-beetle breath.

“Not welcome, not welcome, not welcome, here of all places,” the black-beetle voice said in the darkness. And with each syllable, the darkness cracked to reveal smoky tendrils wrapping around tree trunks, snaking over boles and filling them, leaping over the creek, caressing leaves on the trees before plucking the branches bare of leaves one by one.

Jarrod opened his eyes wider, and the light from the tendrils faded. If he squinted, it returned.

Underneath the hissing, underneath the syllables, Jarrod heard the other voices:

“Help us!”

“Set us free!”

“Prisoners would be free!”

With each voice, new ones joined the cries until no words would be interpreted and the voices sounded like the blended screams of joy and terror and Jarrod was swept from the dripping tree and tossed by the tendrils to the ground into a misty bole and opened and swallowed him.

            The voices, once muted, were louder and came from both inside his skull and out. Jarrod felt the darkness. He dared not open his eyes, but felt the darkness prying at his eyelids, creeping underneath his feathers and working to unclench his clawed feet. The earth convulsed again and spat him out.

            Jarrod lay still.

            The screaming followed. And this time Jarrod, eyes and claws still clenched tight, recognized the screams and cries of pain and fear of friends. Of young once watching as their families died. He smelt blood and the gorge rose in his throat.

            The screaming quietened, but the trees. There were trees, and the trees roared in agony, and the rocks tumbled and the ground shook.

            A shout of command from a quiet voice, and the trees and the rocks and all the Earth grew still.

            Jarrod opened his eyes.

            He lay on the shore of a montane lake, surrounded by trees, bathed in bright sunshine. He looked for the hole in the Earth that had spat him out and saw nothing but Indian paintbrush and bachelor buttons.

            The voice spoke, again in a whisper:

            “Set them free.”

            Jarrod thought of the cavern in the Earth, dripping with water and screams, and a cloud seemed to pass over the sun and his eyes failed and, for a moment, all was dark again.

            “How can I?” he asked. “When I think of them, I cannot see.”

            “Close your eyes, and you will hear,” the voice said.

            Underneath the first voice, strong but still as a whisper, Jarrod heard a quiet burbling cackle, growing louder.

            “If I hear, I will hear only their agony.”

            “Then close your eyes and stop up your ears, Jarrod,” the voice whispered. “I will see and hear for you, and you will deliver them.”

            “Close your eyes, stop up your ears, and I will find you by breath alone and eat you,” said the cackling voice. When the voice spoke Jarrod’s eyes failed and sound came to his ears as if he were deep under water. Jarrod strained to see in the darkness, groping, gasping with his beak open and eyes rolling.

            “Close your eyes, Jarrod, and set the prisoners free,” the quiet voice said.

            “No!” Jarrod opened his eyes wide.

            He heard the chorus of voices again, calling from the darkness. The darkness that was his.

Practice

This man is amazing.

Do what you enjoy. Get good at it. And then get even better.

The Electoral College

In case you were wondering, the Electoral College isn’t going anywhere soon, despite petitions flying about the Internet to get rid of it.

The Electoral College is part of the U.S. Constitution. And the U.S. Constitution is hard to change.

And it’s hard to change for a good reason: Make it easy to change, and any simple majority could put anything it wanted into the document.

Don’t want flags burned? Amend the Constitution to make it illegal.

Want abortion outlawed? Amend the Constitution to make it illegal.

Remember, if you make it easier to amend the Constitution to ease passage of your pet ideal, you make it just as easy for your ideological opponents to do that very same thing.

Here’s how it works: Either two-thirds of the House AND two-thirds of the Senate have to propose an amendment, or two-thirds of the state legislatures have to propose an amendment.

Two-thirds. That is 67 senators. That is 290 representatives. That is 34 states. And that’s just to get the nation to say, “Whoa, Hoss. Somebody wants to change the Constitution.”

To actually get the change into the Constitution? The bar is higher.

Three-fourths of the state Constitutional Conventions or three-fourths of the state legislatures have to approve the change.  That’s 38 states.

To effect change to the U.S. Constitution requires something we haven’t had in this country in a long time: Coalition-building. That same coalition-building that the Founding Fathers thought they were putting into place when they determined the Electoral College, rather than the masses, would select the president.

Because in a Constitutional Convention, the fact that California has 57 members of Congress to, say, Idaho’s six, means nothing. You want one state, one vote? That’s what you get when you try to amend the Constitution. Small states have just as much power as big states.

You want fair, big states? Go to the carnival. Because fair is as fair does.

So you want a change? Ya gotta build a coalition. Ya gotta talk to the red states as well as the blue states. Because even in the earth-shattering election of 2016, there are only 30 red states – and a good handful of those are barely pinkish. And there are only 20 blue states. No matter how you stack it, that doesn’t make the 34 to propose an amendment, and doesn’t come close to the 38 necessary to shoehorn a change on through.

So, coalitions.

And that means talking to each other. Finding out what each other wants. And – this is a dirty word in politics these days, but it’s gotta come into the mix – compromising. And I mean the kind of compromises that makes both sides go away a little mad, not going away thinking they just pulled the wool over the fuzz’ eyes.

So, Sen. Barbara Boxer, your attempts to introduce a bill right now to amend the Constitution to get rid of the Electoral College? Ain’t going nowhere. It’s white-hot right now off of Hillary Clinton’s electoral loss to Donald Trump. You haven’t built any coalitions. You’ve only talked to the same people over and over again in your echo chamber. Your beau geste is dead on the vine.

And that’s a good thing. Because we shouldn’t be changing the Constitution willy-nilly. It should be done by consensus, not in the heat of defeat.

Because if you want white-hot redemption, this is what you’re going to get:

You don’t want that? Then slow down. Build those coalitions. Convince a lot of other people you’re right. And that means not just convincing people you already know agree with you. That means convincing people who think you’re wrong at the outset. That means getting out of your echo chambers. That’s going to be a long process. Probably over a few more election cycles. Don’t want to wait that long? Well, shoulda started years ago, then. Because, Democrats, this is the second time this century you’ve had a candidate win the popular vote but lose in the Electoral College. If you didn’t want that to happen again, you should have started that coalition-building back in 2000 and not waited until 2016 when it happened to your candidate again. Because fool me once, shame on you. 

Fool me twice, shame on me, as the cliché goes.

Also: You can whine about gerrymandering in states that “keep” Republicans in control. Or you can work, over long grueling years, to reverse the damage, not by whining “it’s just so unfair!” but by convincing the people who live in those gerrymandered districts that it’s unfair. Granted, that’s going to take a lot longer than whining. But it’ll lead to winning. And that coalition-building we’ve heard so much about but forgotten how to do.

Not Blind Conformity

Lest anyone think I’m a Frank Burns, who says and believe idiot things like this:

Unless we each conform, unless we obey orders, unless we follow our leaders blindly, there is no possible way we can remain free.

I offer the following:

Yes, I did say in our church we believe in being subject to kings; that we pray for our leaders. But we also stand up against leaders who are making incorrect choices.

The church has issued statements on immigration that emphasize keeping families intact; avoiding policies that target mass expulsions based on race, culture, or religion; and treating others withkindness, no matter their immigration status.

In other words, we assert our right to be at the table when topics of justice and morality are being discussed, whether that table is religious or secular in nature.

That means if we see a leader taking the nation down the wrong path, or see a law that to us is morally unjust, we will let our voice be heard and we will combat that leader and that unjust law, without resorting to violence. To do otherwise would sell our souls for that which has no worth.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a history of being ill-treated by government, at one point in its history even leaving the United States to avoid persecution which involved mob violence, destruction of property, and an order issued by then Governor of Missouri Lilburn W. Boggs that Mormons could be exterminated in that state “on sight” without risk of persecution. We have no desire to see others placed in similar predicaments, and would fight against any government, local or federal, which would seek to enact such laws.

Besides that – I’ve got a streak of Dutch Stubborn in me a mile wide. My father saw Nazi Germany invade the Netherlands during World War II, and has always cautioned us about following anyone blindly.

We Believe in Being Subject to Kings . . .

We learn the following from Paul the apostle (1 Timothy 2:1-6):

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;

For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;

Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

It’s important to remember that at the time, the kings and “all that are in authority” were openly hostile to believers in Christ, persecuting and killing them as they were found, and as tempers ebbed and flowed. Paul lived in the time of Nero, emperor of Rome, not a friend to pretty much anybody. And nobody got to elect these leaders, either.

Not, he notes, because the kings and rulers were all that good, but because the prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks were “good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.”

We have a similar admonition in the LDS Church:

We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. (Articles of Faith 12)

Again, no addenda. Not subject to good kings, or presidents we like, or laws we coincidentaily happen to believe. The church re-emphasized this in a statement released today.

That’s hard to accomplish.

But it’s the goal.

Independent Analysis

My man did not win. But the republic will survive.

We’re going to hear a lot of horror stories now that Donald Trump is president-elect. They started right after the results came in last night, including a stock market freakout that was going to be worse than, well, ANYTHING.

That has not happened. Nor have the death camps, deportations, etc. All the silly hyperbolic things that the Left fears would happen. But won’t. Probably.

Kinda sounds like all the silly hyperbolic things the Right said would happen with Barack Obama at the helm. But didn’t. Unless I missed something.

So, Idaho breakdown:

My man, Evan McMullin, got 46,538 votes, or 6.8 % of those cast. Altogether, independent candidates got 90,359 votes in Idaho, or about 13.2 % of the vote.

Now the Impossible Math®: If – and this is such a big if it can be seen from space – every single independent voter had voted for, say, Hillary Clinton, it would not have made a difference in Idaho, electorally or on the popular vote.

Hillary Clinton won 189,677 votes, or 27.6 % of those cast, compared to Donald Trump’s 407,219 votes, or 59.2 %. Even adding all of the independent votes to her tally only brings her to 40.8 % of the vote, nearly 20 points behind Trump.

Independent candidacies – and independent voters – did not hurt Trump in Idaho. They would not have helped Clinton. You have to go to a swing state for that kind of shenanigans to actually be shenanigans. (And it’s quite possible independent voters DID hurt Clinton in places like Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. More on that later.)

As for down-ballot races, only one is inspiring. Rep. Mike Simpson retained his House seat (no real surprise, as the contest here is always in the Republican primaries, not the general election) . I like Mr. Simpson. He’s a compromiser. Often, he’s called a RINO. So be it. He gets things done, and not always in the way that his conservative supporters might like.

As far as my home county of Bonneville goes, my man did a little better. McMullin got 6,022 votes, or about 13.6 % of those cast. Again, the Impossible Math ® shows independents would not have swung the election Clinton’s way had they all voted for her. Independents got 8,583 votes, or 19.4 % of the votes cast, not enough to hurt Trump or make a difference for Clinton, who earned only 8,930 votes, or 20.2 % of the votes cast. Combining her votes with all independents would have given her 39.8 % of the vote, compared to Trump’s 60.4 %. (And remember when my numbers don’t add up to 100 %, there are rounding errors here.)

All my numbers, BTW, are coming from the Idaho Secretary of State.

There are, as to be expected, lots of reactions. From the left, this might be the most comical, or the most sad (though not the most unexpected).

The mainstream media narrative since Trump won the nomination was that the Republican Party was fractured to the point it would not unite behind its candidate. They seem to have forgotten a corollary most residents of deeply Republican states are familiar with: Republicans are far better at holding their noses and voting for the party line than are the Democrats. Always have been. This is the defining characteristic that makes me a non-Republican, or a RINO at best. I won’t hold my nose. Which is why, historically, I’ve voted more for independent or Democratic candidates than anyone else. Here’s the breakdown, since I was old enough to vote:

1992: Perot

1996: Clinton

2000: Bush

2004: Nader

2008: Obama

2012: Romney

2016: McMullin

So, how about independent voters in swing states?

Yes, the Impossible Math ® shows if – and remember the size of that if – all independent voters had voted for Clinton in, say, Florida, she would have won the state. Here’s the math:

Flipping those votes would mean a Clinton victory in Florida, with 50.6 % of the vote, compared to Trump’s 49.1 %.

Ohio: Not enough of a difference.

Pennsylvania: Enough of a difference.

North Carolina: Not enough of a difference.

Wisconsin: Enough of a difference.

Michigan: Enough of a difference.

Two states – Minnesota (!) and  New Hampshire are apparently still too close to call, though if history bears out, they’ll end up in the Democratic column. Independent votes in both states could send the electoral college either way.

The math shows if Clinton had won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, she’d have 264 electoral votes to Trump’s 243. The 14 Electoral votes left hanging by Minnesota and New Hampshire could have pushed Clinton over the top with 278 Electoral votes or put Trump at 257 votes to Clinton’s 264.

Throw Florida into the mix and Clinton wins easily, with 29 Electoral votes, catapulting Clinton to 293 votes to Trump’s 214.

(All of these numbers are from CNN, which has called Arizona and its 10 electoral votes for Trump.)

So the rule is: Independent voters can swing an election. Depending on where they live. And it’s not necessarily in swing states – Minnesota and New Hampshire typically don’t fall into that category.