Sometimes you have to take sides

I don’t like the muck of politics. People argue with one another, imply the other side doesn’t care and/or eats babies for breakfast, and condemn folks without taking a minute to look for facts.

But some times you have to take sides. There was a writer in Germany long ago, Hedwig Courths-Mahler. She wrote a lot of little novels she called ‘fairy tales for adults.’ She was so popular that some of her novels were reprinted to send to soldiers during World War One.

But then as her writing career was winding up, National Socialism came along. Someone came to her and said she should re-write all her novels to make all her heroes ‘Aryan’ and all the villains Jewish. She didn’t do it. She gave the excuse that she was ‘too old’ for all the work. She didn’t risk her own life and those of her daughters by REALLY taking a stand, but at least she didn’t go along with the suggestion to turn her life’s work into National Socialist party propaganda. 

Today’s Socialists are making similar demands of writers. Include this, condemn that in your writing work: or else! They want ‘diversity,’ and when you write about Appalachian teens bullied for being ‘hillbillies’ you are told that doesn’t count. And they when you write about a ‘diverse’ person that does count, you are told you are the wrong race/gender/sexual orientation to write about that kind of ‘diverse’ person.

I guess the Socialists are teaching us that some people just don’t count. The lesson Hitler taught the Jews, Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses and that Stalin taught the Ukrainians, Christians and ethnic Germans of Russia. But what about the people that do count? Is it fair to demand that Black people always have to write about Black people and disabled people have to write only about people with their particular disability? Why not let the protected ‘diverse’ people at least write about whatever they want.

Even though I am a former/recovering Marxist, a woman, and a person with Same-Sex Attraction (Gay), my current political perspective makes me a non-person to the publishing industry and the mainstream of writers. But in today’s writing world, thank goodness, one can always become an Indie and write what you want. You won’t be well compensated or anything, but within reason you can write what is in your heart.

I am lucky. My writer friend Declan Finn invited me to join a FB group called Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance, which has since moved to MeWe, a more welcoming social medium. I’ve met a number of fine writers there who are not part of the mainstream or the ‘Establishment’ or the Socialist movement. I’ve read a lot of books and short-story collections that I’ve learned of in the group. 

We need to make the most of our current opportunities. I predict it will be harder for non-Socialists of all kinds to succeed much as Indie writers. In part, because the new Socialists totally do not know when they are calling for censorship. They just want to condemn ‘racists’ and other ‘haters,’ which in their mind can apply to anyone of any race, sex or condition, that does not toe the line to what they believe.