Why Are Millennials More Liberal And Less Trusting?

David Frum, who’s the kind of conservative I wish was heading the party, notes some distressing tendencies of Millennials – namely, that they’re more liberal, less patriotic, and less trusting.  He then goes on to attribute this to the usual dubious studies showing that increased ethnical diversity causes people to be less trusting.
I think the answer is simpler: the Republicans have eroded the very concepts of “trust” and “patriotism” with their policies.
Now, of course, no single answer is going to sum up a whole generation’s tendencies – a full compilation of answers regarding “Why are Millennials less patriotic and trust less?” would include “cynicism generated from the Internet,” “the still-ongoing echo of independence from the 1960s counterculture,” “distrust of a government that’s often shown itself to be distrustful,” and a thousand other things.  It’s never as simple as a single vector, and problem-solvers should always acknowledge that.
But the problem with the Republican party is that it’s forever trying to recreate the hard-work culture of the 1950s without incorporating all of those obligations that employers felt to workers.
I’m just old enough to remember the 1980s shocks of layoffs.  There was a time when, if you got a job, you could expect to earn a decent wage from it for life.  Think about how crazy that sounds today: you got one job, and you could, if you wanted, stay at the same company until you retired.  Hell, my Dad and my stepdad both lived that particular dream.
That’s because, culturally, the idea of layoffs was something repugnant.  People didn’t want to do it, because they felt some obligation to their employees – I’m not idealizing the worker/employer relationship back then, but there was some sense among the top executives that if you hired a man, you couldn’t just fling him out the door without a very good reason.  And that reason was not “We need to look good for our shareholders this quarter.”
But the Reagan Revolution sold us on the idea that layoffs were good!  They increased business mobility!  They allowed people to get rid of the deadwood!  They made it so you didn’t have to be so careful hiring people who you might have to keep for years!  And so, within my lifetime, we’ve seen a situation where companies treat workers as disposable cogs…
…and workers, who are not dumb, have adjusted by treating their employers as dispensably as their employers treat them.
Most people have jobs, now, but they’re on the lookout.  They could be laid off at any moment.  They could get fired.  They don’t expect to be here for twenty years, or ten, or even five – at some point they’ll get a better offer and move on.
…and you wonder why this generation doesn’t trust?  Hell, there’s a straight line to be drawn downwards, and you note it, David: “Just 19% of millennials say most people can be trusted, compared with 31% of Generation Xers, 37% of the silent generation and 40% of boomers.”
If you want patriotism, yeah, it sounds good to call to Kennedy and ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.  But that Kennedy line was set in a time where the government did do things for its citizens, assive efforts: it helped soldiers everywhere get housing and education after World War II, because it felt an obligation to those who’d helped it.
The Republican party is not that government.  The Republicans wrap themselves in a philosophy of sacrifice, but the truth is that the sacrifice is all on your end.  Want a guarantee of a job?  Can’t do that.  Want assistance if the corporations decide to start hiring overseas?  Can’t do that.  Want some help if you fought for our country and need a hand?  Uh, no, we just voted that down.
What I’d like to see would be a conservative call for obligation – not the slavering ass-kissing to the glorious job creators, but a serious questioning of the contract between employer and employee beyond just the paycheck.  And then a serious analysis of what we owe to the men we ask to go and get shot, traumatized, and killed to protect US interests.
It’s all very well to spout the Ayn Rand line that we should all be self-sufficient, but telling us “You’re on your own” encourages neither patriotism nor trust.  It encourages a cold-hearted analysis of one’s own interest, in true Ayn Rand style, which tells us that we should use people for our own needs and walk away.
And that’s the conservative culture.  That’s the Tea Party, telling us that if you’re not rich it’s your fault, and only the hard-working will survive.  That’s throwing this new generation into a snakepit – and it is a snakepit that Reagan and his ilk created.  This distrust is the direct result of his policies.
Maddening thing is, there’s good bits in the conservative culture, a wellspring of charity and help to those they think are needy that doesn’t get highlighted enough.  But when you say, “Nobody should take money from my pockets to give to the lazy!”, what you are saying in a very real sense is, “If you fall, you’re on your own.  And no government will help you willingly.”
Is it any wonder that the Millennials are hearing that message all too clearly?

The Most Helpful Stephen King Quote Ever. I Mean This.

My dear friend Kara, who’s got her own fantasy series coming out soon and a couple of nonfiction books on the shelf, was angsting a bit at the state of her career.  I got an agent.  Maybe she should have gotten an agent!  Is she doing writing wrong?
To which I always think back to the most helpful thing ever told to me by a writer, and of course that writer is Stephen King:

If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

Seriously.  I love that quote.  Because on one level, selling enough writing to pay the light bill is not that hard.  In Ohio, that could be $75 depending on the time of year and your house.  It’s a tiny sale.
On another level, selling that fiction is hard.  That’s a three-cent-a-word story, and the markets for those are ridiculously competitive, and getting in there is a hell of a job.  Or self-publishing in an overcrowded, noisy market well enough to stand out and make $75 from individual people is a hell of a job.
Seriously x2.  Writing is a tough goddamned business to be in, and most writers I know have this magical ability to erase all of their past accomplishments and focus on what they don’t have, leading to the inevitable neurosis string of I’d be happy if I just sold a story.  I’d be happy if I just sold a story to a pro market.  I’d be happy if I just sold three pro stories to get into SFWA.  I’d be happy if I just got nominated for an award.  I’d be happy if I just won an award.  I’d be happy if I got an agent.  I’d be happy if I….
This is why sane people don’t marry writers.
And yeah, Kara hasn’t written her bestseller yet.  Maybe she hasn’t earned tens of thousands from her writing.  But damn, selling enough to pay a light bill is a mark of courage, and in her rush forward to better things let her (and us) not forget this grand achievement.
And if you haven’t yet paid your light bill, let me tell you: one story to the right market can do it.  And then, quite seriously, I’ll consider you talented.  I may consider you talented without any story sales, of course, but paying one light bill is the perfect goal for a beginner: it’s both really difficult and very much within reach.  And it’s a fine mark of distinction.
Get out there.  Get your light bulb on.

What Will The Outside World Think?

It occurred to me today that I have a burnt circuit.  I do not care what people on the outside think about the things I love.
This is partially from Magic’s recent #crackgate, wherein a douche went around photographing fat people’s ass-cracks at a Magic tournament, and partially from fandom’s reaction to Jonathan Ross being rejected as the Hugo nominee.  Both precipitated hand-flutterings from people – “Man, this makes us look bad to Those People.”  Those People, of course, are the millions of folks not really invested in the Hugo or Magic or whatever, to whom this ugly introduction may make us look bad.
I don’t give a shit about Those People.
And maybe that’s not fair.  But I got bullied a lot by people who looked like Those People, and at some point a switch cut off: I really don’t care what Those People think, ever.  My hobbies were always weird, like walking lead figurines around a pencilled dungeon and pretending to be a wizard, and so I gave up on the concept of legitimacy.
I love what I love.  People may think it’s funny – will think it’s funny, in fact.  They may paint me as an asocial nerd, or some fat dude with an asscrack, or whatever, as they have since I was twelve.  And I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that “No, my crazy hobby isn’t that way!” before shrugging and moving on.
Because the truth is, what I do is a little weird.  And if you’re not inclined to like it, well, it’s pretty easy to make fun of.  And if you want to do that…
…fuck it.  Do it.  I mean, it’d be nice if the entire world thought of Magic players as well-groomed smart guys going on adventures (for many of them are!), or science fiction fandom as a vanguard of approaching world culture, but… it’s not necessary to me.  I’ve given up seeking approval from random groups of people – many of whom are just looking for an excuse to laugh at strangers anyway.
Which is not to say I don’t worry about being inviting.  If Magic’s full of mouth-breathing douches who constantly make jokes about women and gays, well, I’m concerned, because if someone wants to play Magic I think they should feel welcomed here.  I’ll work to muffle those dorks best I can.  And if some idiot is walking around with a camera at a tournament with the specific intent of mocking people there, then that makes the people at the tournament feel bad, and so fuck him, kick that douche out, he’s hurting my people.
But in general, I don’t care if we’re presenting a good or a bad image to the world at large.  I’m a man of ridiculous endeavors – polyamory seems bizarre to people, science fiction seems bizarre to people, Magic seems bizarre to people, and hell, even my love of fireplay is pretty damned weird.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time as an ambassador to the mainland from the Archipelago Of Marginal Pastimes, pressing the flesh and trying to convince them that this is a perfectly lovely thing to do.
No.  Either you get it instinctively.  Or you’re open-minded enough that you try it and love it.  If you’re the sort of person who’s going to slot me into a pre-fitted box, I’m not going to spend time engaging with you, I’m going to walk in and out of the goddamned box at will to show you that it’s a mime’s construction made of thin air and intent.
Some of my hobbies have gone mainstream – hey, I can play Dragon Age on my XBox and have that be perfectly okay for a middle-aged man, mostly! – and that’s great.  But I don’t think that happened because videogames made a conscious effort to dress up nice and be cool – videogames stayed videogames, and eventually enough people played them that force of sheer numbers bowled them over into the “mostly acceptable” column.
Maybe that’ll happen with Magic.  Maybe it won’t.
Either way, I’ll still be playing.

So I Got An Agent, And He's A Good One

While hunting for an agent, I would occasionally ponder just how ludicrous this whole “traditional publishing” thing was.
“Selling a book isn’t your first major milestone,” I told Gini.  “So you’d think that ‘getting an agent’ would be your first major milestone, but no!  It isn’t!  ‘Having an agent ask to look at your book’ is.  And think about that!  There’s sad authors who go whole careers without even having an agent ask to look at their work.
“Only in this business, man,” I muttered.  “Only in this business is getting someone to read the first three chapters of your book considered to be a major triumph.”
But it is, really.  Authors speak in hushed tones of “the partial” – and, God willing, “She asked for the full manuscript.”  Now, this is usually code for “The agent will spend four months pondering it, only to tell you very kindly that it’s not for them,” but that’s not the point.  The point is that getting someone to look at your book means that you’ve escalated your game to a certain level!  Lots of people don’t get that far.
Sad?  True.  The two go together, like peanut butter and chocolate.
So when I got the contract in the mail announcing that Evan Gregory of the Ethan Ellenberg Agency had indeed signed me as his client, thus vaulting me to the next step of the trad-pub game, I couldn’t have been happier. Actually, that’s a lie.  As y’all know, I’d been in a depressive slump, so while I was super-happy, I also approached the happiness like a distrustful stray cat, waiting for a boot to be chucked at me.  Even today, I keep re-reading those emails with a wary eye, as though on further examination they might turn out to be from some helpful Nigerian prince who will help me transfer his fortune into my bank account.
But dudes.  Done deal.  And now Evan begins the haul of schlepping my books about to publishers, which means God willing I will have news for you at some point.  This stuff takes weeks, months, years.  And even more luck.
And I schmeared this news all over Twitter yesterday, but that felt too ephemeral.  I know some day I’ll want to look through my archives so I can ask, “When did I first get an agent?”  And here will be this blog post, telling me. Reassuring me that shit actually happened.
As a first step, it’s a pretty darned good one.

A Very Brave Girl Shaving Her Head For Her Sister

So my goddaughter Rebecca.  Still has brain cancer.  Still on chemotherapy.  Still sucks.
However, my other goddaughter, Carolyn, is shaving her head to help raise funds for her sister.  If you know Carolyn, you know the kid’s a born performer, has been doing song and dance routines at parties practically since she’s been born.  She’s in plays every other week, with her long brown hair.
So for a young girl to shave her head to help raise funds and her sister’s spirits is pretty amazing.
The Meyer family has always been a little magical, if you ask me.  They’ve been loving and supportive through some amazing things.  And I’m really proud of Carolyn for volunteering to do this.
If you want to help Carolyn out, you can donate to St. Baldrick’s to help her team.  She’s trying to get to $6,000, and she’s currently at $5,114.  As is usual with these sorts of donations, any amount will help (and we’ll take prayers if you have no cash). We love Rebecca, we love Carolyn, and we love all the Meyers in their time of need, and it’s little silly things like this that help cheer us up.
(Rebecca is doing as well as can be expected, by the way.  The MRI shows no sign of regrowth as of yet, but the chemotherapy is hard, particularly on a little girl.  So given that a large part of her issues are psychological now, donating helps show her that she’s at least doing some good in between all of the chemotherapy poisoning.)