Let It Not Be Said That I Remained Silent

(feel free to pass this around anywhere, if you find it of value)

They say that if you're wondering what you would have done in World War II, or in the Civil War, or in relation to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, just look at what you're doing now. I'm looking, and I'm not satisfied. I'm not doing nothing, but I could be doing more, and I will try. But in the meantime, let me say what I believe, as starkly as possible, so as to leave no doubt about where I stand. Post your own somewhere! Your opinion is at least as noteworthy as mine.

Climate change will kill us all if we don't stop it. Lots of people are doing lots of things to help, and that's great. Governments and corporations are not doing enough, and many powerful individuals are using their considerable resources to prevent any efforts to save us. These individuals are the enemies of humanity.

Fossil fuels should be left in the ground. All of them. Starting now, or as close to now as possible. This will be tough for us, but this is an emergency and we'll figure out how to cope eventually.

Eat less beef. Ah, I miss it. But I'm told it makes a difference.

Most of our problems, we could eventually figure them out. The trouble is we're on the clock with climate change. We have to solve that now, and all this other stuff is getting in the way. So we have to fix everything now, urgently, and instead everything's getting worse. That's whatcha call "suboptimal".

Don't be mean. That's the main rule. If your beliefs work their way around to where you're telling yourself you have to be mean, they're wrong and you should change them. 

War may be the worst thing people can do, but you can't just let Putin have his way in Ukraine, because if you reward him for attacking Ukraine he'll understand correctly that he can just keep attacking countries.

We shouldn't have surrendered to Covid. We could have beaten it. Still, wear your masks, ventilate your rooms, and stay up to date on your vaccines, because it's still nasty and we can still save lives. Not to mention practice for the next pandemic!

A faction in Israel is trying to exterminate the Palestinians in Gaza. I don't care if they're Jewish or what; they're guilty of genocide and are the enemies of humanity. Some people are taking this opportunity to express anti-Semitism, which is not only a type of bigotry as bad as any other, but is also a good sign that the anti-Semite is evil in other ways, and, again, is an enemy of humanity.

There are students and other protestors speaking up for the Palestinians. I think they're great and I support them. Leave them alone.

Fascism is rising around the world and needs to be fought harder, by more people, and by what remains of our institutions. Those who kind of agree with this but who respond by nodding soberly and saying, "yes, but you don't understand, and what about, and...," and do nothing, are part of the problem. The fascists, and those who intentionally support them and their variants, the racists and misogynists and homophobes and transphobes and Christian dominionists, are enemies of humanity.

The fascists aren't quite in charge yet everywhere. But they're having an effect: they're turning up the level of fascism in our society. If you've ever had the reaction of, "well, the only option left to us in this situation is to get a gun. Revolution," that's a sign of fascism. They want people thinking like that, like people have to work things out with guns and no other way.

"Both sides" are not the same. Maybe at one time they were, but now one side is normal, with all the benefits and problems that implies, and the other side is rolling downhill into fascism and nihilism, and gaining speed. You don't have to like it that this is the case, but it's a problem if you don't accept it.

If, for whatever reason, you're on the side of the fascists, and you happen to be reading this, this paragraph is for you. I won't take up my time by trying to refute your beliefs or talking points; you're smart enough to do that yourself, if you want to. The information's out there. I'll just say this: you don't have to live like this. You don't have to keep hating everybody, you don't have to view the world as a bloody power struggle, you can find meaning for yourself not in the degradation of others. It's much nicer for you if you change your ways.

Conservatism is fake. It's hatred, greed, and the lust for power, wearing one overcoat made of high-minded rhetoric that nobody actually believes.

Borders are fake. Let immigrants in. They're people! You know, people?

Abolish the police. I'm not being as "extreme" as I could be by saying that; there are harsher verbs than "abolish".

Trans people are basically harmless (know how I know? Because if one was harmful, we would never have heard the end of it) and just want to be left alone. But, currently, they also need protection from their self-appointed enemies. Do what you can to help.

There are things that can be said in favour of both socialism and capitalism. There are also ways in which both can be abused. I have doubts that we will ever find an economic system that works perfectly for humans, but I think any system will do which preserves the ability of ordinary people to have control over their lives, and no system will do that does not.

Institutions are weak these days. Nothing good will happen unless individuals team up to make it happen; nothing bad will be prevented unless individuals team up to prevent it.

You are more than your job. You are more than your economic role. Luminous beings are we. The most important thing is that you exist and you can do what you want with that fact. Create, think, play, love, eat, swim. It's your life.

This "enemies of humanity" stuff may make me sound intolerant, to some. To which I say: Oh, right, I'm the problem.

The people I've described as "enemies of humanity" have earned the very worst treatment we can conceive for them, right up to torment and execution. But just because they deserve it doesn't mean we should do it. We don't deserve to be torturers or murderers; nobody does. We need to find a way to beat them without killing them, and to find a way to persuade--or, even better, convince--them to join us. If we as humans have jobs that we are responsible for just because we live, these are them.

We, as humans, have been too tolerant of our own evil for too long. We need to stop accepting it, or listening to it, or compromising with it, and start fighting it harder, and to win. I think "civilization" is more of a goal to be achieved than an existing status to be defended. Are we civilized now? Are we civil? Maybe someday we will be.

Honestly, everybody, we can do this. We can. But the golden future won't build itself. Help somebody today.

Listen to Me

 Sorry for not posting more. I don't mean to not post stuff here. But it's just so easy.

Anyway, I recently appeared on the Legion of Substitute Podcasters: Tomorrow's Heroes Today podcast, discussing issue #9 of the Threeboot. Give it a listen if you're of a mind to. This may not be the best link for it, but any podcatcher you use ought to be able to set you right if it doesn't work for you.

Take care!

Book Review: The Fourth Turning Is Here (Neil Howe)

 I reviewed Neil Howe's new book, The Fourth Turning Is Here, which is about generational cycles, history, and the kind of nonsense we're all currently trying to survive here, on my other website. Give it a look!

Time Beacons: My Time Travel Nexus Articles

In 2019-2020 I wrote a series of articles for the Time Travel Nexus website. I didn't stop so much as the website stopped updating; their newest article was posted in early 2021 and I haven't heard from them at all. The website's mission was to highlight fictional depictions of time travel, so my articles, in turn, looked at Legion of Super-Heroes stories from the perspective of what we could learn about time travel as shown in those comics. I called the series "Time Beacons", for partially obvious reasons. Might I continue writing them and posting them here? The last article is a satisfying stopping point, but certainly there's more material out there that I had been planning to cover! No promises, but I might come back to it a little bit.

Anyway, I wrote a total of ten articles for TTN, and I'm proud of them, and if you'd care to check them out yourself, this is them:

Time Beacons 1: The Legion of Super-Heroes (Adventure #247)

Time Beacons 2: The Fatal Five / The Doomed Legionnaire (Adventure #352-353)

Time Beacons 3: The Adult Legion / The War of the Legions (Adventure #354-355)

Time Beacons 4: Mordru the Merciless / The Devil's Jury (Adventure #369-370)

Time Beacons 5: The Hero Who Hated the Legion (S&LSH #216)

Time Beacons 6: We Can't Escape the Trap in Time (S&LSH #223)

Time Beacons 7: The Infinite Man Who Conquered the Legion  (S&LSH #233)

Time Beacons 8: The Great Darkness (LSHv2 #290-294)

Time Beacons 9: The Origin of the Universe File (LSHv2 #295)

Time Beacons 10: The Future Is Forever (LSHv2 #300)

Enjoy! And don't forget I'm also writing a fantasy story on my other site. It's going well!

The Legionnaires: Toyman

Toyman, aka Winn Schott, aka Winslow Schott Jr., aka Computer Lad, of 21st-century Earth. Created by a bunch of TV writers drawing upon various pre-existing Toyman characters created by lots of people.

This whole time there's been a character missing from my All Time Legion Roster page, and nobody's complained to me about it! Here's a character who joined the Legion five years ago, our time, and it's taken me this long to recognize it, and never a word from any of you on the subject. I give you one job.

Winn is a character from the Supergirl tv show. I watched the first few seasons of it, but eventually I just kind of fell away from the Arrowverse altogether. So I may not know all the things I know about this guy.

At the start he was a guy who worked with Supergirl's secret identity, Kara Danvers, at a big media corporation. He was sort of their IT expert, and he had an unreciprocated crush on Kara, which sometimes led him to engage in some crummy behaviour. Combine this with his backstory as the son of the supervillain Toyman, and you'll understand if I say that I was leery about what kinds of storylines he'd eventually get involved in. But it didn't happen: what happened instead was that he eventually did a kind of exchange-student thing with Brainiac 5, where Brainy hung out in the present day for a while and Winn went to the future and joined the Legion.

We don't have, I think, a whole lot of detail on what Winn did as a Legionnaire, but his qualifications were that he was just really good with technology. And... I dunno what I think of that. This 21st-century guy is better, a lot better, at using 31st-century technology than 31st-century people? That sounds like some nonsense to me. But a) I do think that people's raw smarts don't increase over a thousand years, and b) he is the Toyman's son. So... sure? Still seems like a dumb idea to me, but I think we can all agree that there'd be a lot fewer Legionnaires on the historical list if "seems like a dumb idea" was disqualifying.

One detail: apparently Winn marries Ayla Ranzz while in the future, and they have a daughter. I don't think Ayla is treated well in these televisual adaptations. But whatever, the show's called Supergirl; this is all details.

(Probably should also note that there's a long and occasionally proud tradition of the Legion interacting with the descendants of Superman villains, and sometimes even making them Legionnaires. Brainiac 5 of course, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.)

Anyway, welcome to the blog, Winn. You earned it. You got into the Legion of Super-Heroes, and, as Sherwood Kiraly would say, that's a lot harder than getting into the phone book.