Mirage of Blaze Translations

(Copied from my Substack)

Disclaimer: I’m not claiming my story is important. It’s just the story I have to tell.

One of my best friends lives in Baghdad, which is among the many, many places now bombed in this regional war started by my government. As I write this, she and her family are probably all right. As far as I know, there have been no strikes near where they live and work. They’ve survived worse. They survived being bombed by my country during the war over obviously fake WMD’s. But as the days go by and I don’t hear from her, I can’t help reflecting that they might soon die because my country is run by lunatics and cowards.

And I keep thinking I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

My own senators and representative already oppose the was on Iran, even heavily pro-Israeli Ron Wyden. I’ve already written to thank them. But they are outnumbered by the cowards in Congress. I could sign petitions. I could write or call other legislators. I could stand in the street with a sign, but what can I do that would have real impact? Where do my strengths lie for taking action?

I don’t have a good answer for what to do about this war. But broadly, thinking of my life on Earth, my mind turns toward my writing, and as that’s a focus of this Substack, I’ll share a thought about it. In my science fiction, I write messy situations, and I write with sympathy toward virtually all my characters. I sometimes feel this puts me at odds with the prevailing values of my own progressive comrades in current social science fiction circles. The Zeitgeist there seems to favor sharp divisions between right and wrong: the oppressed are in the right; the oppressors are in the wrong. This must be clearly driven home in the name of real-world justice.

I think I respectfully disagree. Not with the premise about oppression being bad, but with the narrative prescription of moral simplicity. I’m not saying straightforward moralizing stories shouldn’t exist. Many value them and get validation of their own struggles from them. Those stories have their place. But I occupy a different place. I try to write (almost) everyone with sympathy: oppressed, oppressor, dictator, soldier, abused, abuser, the broadminded, the dogmatic.

What does this have to do with the war in the Middle East? This war has been enabled by simplistic morality narratives: Iran has a harmful regime (true); therefore, it’s fine for “the good guys” (us/US) to drop missiles on them because they are “bad guys.” The same rationale supports ICE, excuses January 6th but deports people for a school protest, excuses kidnapping the president of Venezuela while defending “Our President” tooth and nail. It’s American exceptionalism on steroids: “We are Good, and they are Bad, so anything we do to ‘get’ them is Good.”

This kind of mindset, even if it’s not even close to this level of stupid, makes it easy to label groups as deserving punishment because they do bad things. Iran’s government is oppressive; it does fund attacks that kill civilians. This eclipses the schoolgirls, the families going about their business, the people doing the hard work for decades of trying to resist a reactionary theocracy. It makes a bomb seem like an easy answer.

My friend, whom I dearly love, could die in this war. She’s an English teacher just trying to live her life.

What can I do? I’ll go on trying to figure that out, imperfectly, often ineffectually, and sometimes irresponsibly, as I learn how to be a citizen under fascism. But one thing I will surely keep on doing is writing characters with sympathy. With the exception of a few very minor walk-ons, it will be every character, every time: the murderers, the rapists, the wealthy, the colonizers, the trampled, the sacrificed, the raped, the ignored, the destitute, the elite, the insightful, and the lacking in insight. I’ll do it because this world needs more sympathy, and that’s something I can do.