Celtic Bard: Blog

I recently got near complete silence in my house, hours and hours to myself. And with that time, I sat in front of the computer and looked through the things that have been languishing unfinished and BAM! Bloody muse hit me right between the eyes with the jones to finish An Abridged History of the Order. I know, right? The thing that has been unfinished for well over a year due to the fact that I have not been in the mood to sit in front of the computer for hours and hours, switching back and forth between writing and research web pages. Not the nearly completed Enter the Darkness, not any of the long-unfinished Am'mortal stories I have unfinished, not Future Distorted or Anomaly of the Fates, not even some of the stuff I have started but have not decided what to do with yet (to post or not to post). Well, that said, I finished two more chapters of AAHotO and decided I will end that one like I started it, with a short, short story. The short, short story will be about the Order's preparations for the coming of Alexandra McKiernan, so that should round out that project nicely. I have not finished it yet, hopefully I can get that done in the next day or so, but I am submitting the two new chapters of AAHotO tonight, so they should be up by tomorrow.

On a related note, the next chapter of Enter the Darkness is going to be rather long. I would have ended it already and posted it, but it has sort of escaped my control and I think it will wind up being one of the longer chapters when I finally finish it. This chapter will be setting up the finale, so I was loath to break it up into two chapters, which is why it is still going. I am hoping to wrap that chapter up in the next few days as well, so check back in any announcements on that end. That is all the news for now, enjoy the posts and thanks for reading. I truly appreciate the support.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I have completed the latest chapter for Anomaly of the Fates. My outside editor finally finished the read-through and so I submitted it for your enjoyment tonight. It should be available sometime tomorrow.

I have also reposted the Prologue for AotF to include an Author's Note. Said note is my foray into local political editorialism and comments on my alma mater's recent name change. As the note says, if this really interests you, you can use the internet to peruse the coverage of this idiocy.

Additionally, I will warn readers that I used this latest chapter to vent some irritation and frustration on my current locale. Since the protagonist comes from a similar place as far as his setting changes goes, I think my ire and his are fairly compatible within the framework of the story. I am sure many, many people find the Augusta, GA area pleasant and a nice place to move to from northern cities. I, however, grew up in West Germany in my formative years and aside from my sojourn in Georgia, New Jersey is the place I have lived the longest in the United States. This makes Georgia, particularly in the summer, unbearable. Those of you from the South, please forgive my venting on this subject in this chapter.

And finally, I have also used this chapter to highlight a part of Southern life that caught not only myself but many other Northern transplants to the region by surprise: race. In this chapter you will find my clumsy way to express some of my irritations, confusion, and fatigue about how consuming race/racism is in the South. Nobody in my family was on this continent during the Civil War, not having arrived until around the turn of the twentieth century or later. As such, we don't really have much stake in the issues fought over with such fervor over the first century and a half of this nation's history. We have only had to deal with its aftermath. Growing up in the military as I did, it was not until I came back to the United States shortly before high school that I realized there was a Deal about race in America. My first best friend that I have memories of was a kid named Quincy. The fact that he was black never really registered to me. He was just Quincy, the dude I spent most of my days with until I left West Germany for New Jersey. My best friend when I got settled in New Jersey was a kid named Eric Valera. I am pretty sure he was Hispanic, but again, since it never registered that I should care, I really can't recall. My best friends when I moved back to West Germany a couple of years later were a good ol' boy from South Carolina named TJ and an Indian kid named Michael. Indian as in Native American or Indian as in subcontinent I really couldn't tell you because he was just Michael. Looking back, based on my memories of his father's features (my memory of him is sort of like a younger, more Indian Pervez Musharaf), I would guess subcontinental Indian. All of this is a long winded way of saying it wasn't until my teen years, when I moved to Missouri for a year and then to Georgia that racism became a pervasive enough force in the society in which I lived that I took note of it. I was shocked to learn the KKK was still around. Not only still around, it had an office down the street from the high school I attended in Missouri and marched down what was called main street the year before I got there. It struck me as somewhat anachronistic the way people in Georgia dealt with race in the modern world. But then I guess I have not only lived a rather sheltered life growing up in the military, but my perception of the world is viewed through lenses that don't see what is really there. I look at a "brown" Hispanic man and see someone with green skin or a "black" African man and see purple or dark, dark green or a "yellow" Oriental man and see orange or brown or green. Nothing most other people see. Even my own supposedly very pale white skin looks pink and orange to my sight. So hating someone because of what they "look" like has always somewhat confused me. My philosophy has always been that there are far better reasons to hate someone, just give them a chance and they will give you one if that is what you are looking for. Or if you are a more tolerant sort, they will give you a reason to like them. More than anything else, the ignorance that surrounds race in America, not just on the side of the bigots but on the side of those who pander and race-bait, make me sad and weary. Sad that such energy and inventiveness is not used for more constructive purposes that will advance us further together, and weary at trying to carry people who want nothing more than to either stay where we are or are trying to drag us backward. Bigots and race profiteers both.

Anyway, sorry for the soapbox performance this time around but I thought this latest chapter of AotF needed some explanation as to my thinking on it. I welcome your thoughts, as always, so long as they are constructive and don't include examples of what I was talking about above.

It was a busy last few weeks and so I have not had time to post anything. I have a few things either partially or wholly complete . . . in hand-written form. I have handwriting so bad that it will take me a while to wade through it all and get it in the computer to post, so bear with me. The first thing that will appear for your reading pleasure will be the next chapter of Anomaly of the Fates. It is already transcribed, it merely have to edit and submit it, which I hope to have done in the next day or so. After that, it will be whatever I get to first so keep an eye out, something new comes your way soon.

I want to extend my thanks to all of those who responded to my posting about the Islamofascism e-mail. Nearly all of them were fully supportive and the one or two that were supportive but understanding of the e-mailer did so in a thoughtful and respectful manner. It is gratifying that so many took the time to read the posting and respond in a way that also showed that more than just me have thought about this subject over the last decade or so. Thank you.

Now, I had thought my postings here were done for a while, at least until I had something to post on FS and SOL. And then I read my e-mail yesterday night and sat composing a response for two hours. I will post the e-mail and the response but first a word. I am usually gratified by the responses sharing my work with the world sends my way and try to be appreciative, as I know it takes time out of people's lives to read my stuff and respond to it. Time that could be spent doing much more important things. So my responses are always as genuine, dosed liberally with humility and gratitude, as I can make them. You deserve that much for giving me your time. However, when something like this comes my way and pushes as many buttons as it does, my response is not humble nor is it particularly grateful. Some may take in my response and be offended, and for that I apologize. I merely answered an e-mail full of assumptions and a rather condescending tone from the place that lived through growing up knowing the Russians could come over the East German border at any time and be shooting me within hours or minutes and watching nineteen lunatics destroy nearly three thousand lives for a cause as barbaric as that of Crusaders slaughtering Arab villagers in the Holy Land or Roundheads butchering Roman Catholics in Ireland. A lifetime of being interested in history and an adulthood spent being fascinated by politics, especially international politics, also came into play in my response. Was it a little much? Perhaps, perhaps not. But I took my time to respond fully to the e-mailer's points and added some of my own as well as some things which I have thought about from time to time over the years. I also had plenty of time to not send it, especially since I won't have sent it until after I finish this post and others, and I still thought the writer deserved my honest and frank reply. I tried to keep it as respectful as I could while still making sure the writer knew how the e-mail was taken by me. I guess if it was a little much, you can let me know. By the way, I kept the e-mailer's name out of things out of respect for their privacy.

E-Mail:
"Islamofascism" is a nonsense term coined by
propagandists to manipulate public opinion.

Islam is a religion.

Fascism is "a political philosophy, movement, or
regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts
nation and often race above the individual and
that stands for a centralized autocratic
government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe
economic and social regimentation, and forcible
suppression of opposition"

The LAST thing Islamists want is a state
government supplants religion as the primary force
in society.

The LAST thing fascists want is a bunch of clerics
running around challenging their authority.

The last thing the people who coined the term want
is for you to actually think about what it means
or does not mean. They just want you to attach the
negative associations you have with fascism to the
negative associations you have with Islam.

Islamic THEOCRACIES can be very repressive. Most
theocracies put their religious values ahead of
civil rights...

You just look like a dupe when you use a nonsense
term to describe something that does not exist,
Islamofacism.


Response by Me:
While I appreciate those who read my work and reply to my blog postings, I must say that this e-mail has, like no other, brought me the closest to wanting to intellectually smack someone who has written to me. The tone assumes ignorance of geopolitical and historical realities as well as the use and power of words. Having lived on the front lines of the Cold War and through the War on Terrorism in its first phases, and having studied and been a student (not the same thing by the way) of history and politics, I know full well what I mean and am talking about when I use the term "Islamofascism." Unlike your rather narrow definition of fascism, I have studied and seen the effects of the Era of Fascism in its fullest historical bloom. Even were I to take your definition as the only one, I would still apply it to many of the sects of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, especially those that gave rise to the regime in Iran and those who look to al-Qaeda as the standard-bearer of a philosophy that "exalts" the idea of a pan-Islamic and imperialistic Caliphate, embraces the ideology of the cult of personality embodied in their "Great Leader," views non-Muslims as inferior and worthy of destruction, scorns and destroys works of art, literature, and academia that do not fall in line with their beliefs and the rigid rules those beliefs set down regarding art and expression of ideas, would use economic repression and oppression as tools of state, and kills (not merely suppresses) opposition.

I know that was a bit of a run-on sentence so let me take them one at a time. The stated goal of many of those to which I would apply the label of Islamofascist is the establishment of a pan-Islamic Caliphate (adhering to their own brand of Islam, of course). While I do not ordinarily study things I think of as being bad ideas, one does pick up a lot habitually watching the C-SPAN, History, and Discovery Channels, and reading this and that.

This leads me to believe that said Caliphate would look something like the Islamic Republic of Iran's government, with the clerics on top and a front man as the "President" that the people get to vote for in "fair" elections but has no true authority of his own, only authority given to him by the clerics. Such veneers of choice are the hallmark of totalitarian governments the world over, including fascist governments where there were votes and somehow the fascists still managed to take over, despite not getting a majority at the polls.

This is where the concept of "one man, one vote, one time" sort of rears its ugly little head and what people fear every time an Islamist party comes to power in the Islamic world. Every Islamist movement seems to hold up one man as being the receptacle of all the holy wisdom of Allah. Whether it be Iran and its Ayatollah, the PLO and Yasser Arafat, al-Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, or so many others, they embrace the kind of cult of hero worship seen under Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco.

A state would not replace religion under Islamofascism; religion is the state in a way not even theocracies like Tibet or the Vatican ever dreamed. The closest analog is probably the Pharaoh being venerated in Ancient Egypt.

And little needs to be said of the respect these people have for life. Death is a tool to be used often and with as many going down for the cause as possible, be they non-Muslims or simply Muslims who do not espouse their particular brand of Islam. Destruction of art, literature, intellectual works, and those who practice them is also a hallmark of both this more modern movement as well as those who originated fascism eight decades ago. Whether they be cartoonists expressing political beliefs, movie-makers and animators doing the same, authors being critical of them, or centuries old statutes carved by those of another faith, all are subject to threats, assassinations, and destruction.

As for opposition and economics, the mere selection of targets for their death and destruction should suffice to show that: moderate leaders of Muslim nations, clerics who stray from the fold or follow differing tenets, academics urging peace and strength in the face of terror, oil refineries and pipelines, strategic waterways through which world commerce flows, air traffic and mass transit, night clubs and tourist destinations in countries dependent on tourism, the World Trade Center. Tools and targets not dissimilar from lessons the Nazis tried to teach with their pogroms, Kristallnacht being the most notable example, where businesses and places of worship were targeted in order to pound the message of the fascists home. The only intellectual pursuits lauded by those who espouse this kind of ideology are studying religion/philosophy and subjects that can be used to build weapons in the pursuit of more efficient means of killing their enemies and making more of them. Ask a nuclear scientist in Iran how free he is to go where he wants and do as he pleases. The answer will be not very and anything that makes the regime think he is disloyal will be a danger to himself and to his family and friends. Similar things would have been said of rocket scientists and nuclear physicists in Nazi Germany. The same could be said of a jihadist who actually thought about the nonsense he spouted in his suicide video and decided to live or the friendly journalist who had second thoughts about regurgitating Islamist propaganda. The same would go for the Lebanese parliament member bucking the Hezbollah party line or Afghan village headman backing the coalition against the Taliban.

I guess the bottom line is that I have thought about this subject. I have watched militant Islam over the past thirty years. I have contemplated where their ideology fits into the scope of human lunacy and depravity. I have compared it to other theocracies, authoritarians, totalitarians, dictators, and absolutists. And with that contemplation I have found that those who murder innocents with as much joy and ruthlessness as those who are called Islamofascists (by myself and others) in the name of their ideology and their political goals for the last three decades and more are right to be compared to those who killed innocents in the name of their ideology and political goals almost eight decades ago. It does not make me look like a dupe for thinking so or using such a term. What it does is make you look like one of those who seem to find every reason under the sun not to call a spade a spade. It is a form of political correctness and propaganda that is going to get some of us killed be-cause the rest of us are trying to keep everyone safe despite you instead of with your help.

I suppose more could be said, but why? If you are still reading this by this point you probably already get my point and if you aren’t you never would anyway.

CB

Too much?