Caution! Politics! Better not read it!

An American SF author and friend of mine has asked me if I’d like to go to a major SF fantasy convention in Boston. He could get me to be one of the ‘guest authors’. However, that will be in 2026.

The disadvantage: I would have to pay for the flight myself.

The advantage: I could present my English-language novels to a native-speaker audience with a reading and presentation.

I really don’t know what to say to him. Apart from the flight costs, the USA doesn’t really appeal to me as a destination at the moment. Who knows what will happen by then? Will the orange-coloured harasser of women have restricted democratic rights there to such an extent that, as a creative and free-thinking person, a) you won’t feel comfortable there and b) you might even have reason to be scared? Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I am worried.

Of course I’m also worried about our own country and Europe. There is a trend towards undemocratic parties everywhere. I can’t even begin to understand how anyone can think that some semi-criminal ‘smart bastards’ will solve all the problems in one brutal blow. I do believe, though, that brutal blows are part of their agenda: they have enough brainless thugs in their ranks for that. However, I don’t see them offer any solutions – except perhaps a ‘final solution’ like the dreadful, murdereous one 80 years ago that our country is famous for. Do we as a people really have so little character and conscience?

I’m dreading this development. Do millions people have to die again before some of us realise that things weren’t really so bad before soulless  people without any scruples or morals seized power?

I think that the wealth of information offered by the Internet has not contributed to the promotion of intelligence, but has completely overwhelmed a not inconsiderable proportion of the population and reduced thinking to a reptilian brain (brain stem) function. That reduced part of our brain only knows ‘fight or flight’. Mentally restricted in this way, people can only reach for a  proverbial ‘club’ and beat up their neighbours.

There’s a lot more I could say about this, but I really don’t want to go on.