tomreedtoon wrote:

If you doubt this, attend any science fiction convention. Not necessarily one of the big ones like WorldCon or Dragon*Con; go to one of the little local weekend cons held throughout the country.

Yeah, actually; I go to cons like this all the time.

Ask a question or two about a current political statement and your response will usually be right-wing.

This experience is so different from mine that I honestly have to wonder if you somehow mixed up a science fiction convention with a Republican party convention. I've heard all range of political views expressed by fans, and there is absolutely no one ideology that predominates. If there's any unifying belief at all, it's the idea that everybody should be free to speak their minds -- which, given the tendency of American conservatism to stifle dissent, counts as a liberal idea all by itself.

Lots of ex-vets and would-be vets there ... They're the 38 percent that still believe there is no alternative to Bush.

As a veteran, and a liberal, I urge you not to assume that all vets are right-wing. (As for the "would-be vets," I agree with you: they're almost uniformly fascist idiots. I also think they're a small minority, albeit a loud one.)

If you want to know what being a outcast among outcasts feels like, wear a Greenpeace T-shirt in a science fiction convention and try to pass out global warming literature. You'll be called every kind of fool that exists, or simply shunned. (emphasis mine)

Okay, now we come to the crux of the matter: you weren't at the con to have a good time, you were there to make converts. And you're outraged that you were insulted or ignored? Gee, why would a bunch of generally friendly, welcoming geeks do something as rude as that?

I guarantee you, had you been there passing out Bibles, or brochures for any political candidate -- Republican, Democratic, or otherwise -- or any other ideological literature, you'd have received a similarly frosty welcome. SF cons are a place to have fun; nobody objects to a good political discussion late at night in the con suite, but nobody wants to be preached at.

Your stereotypes about SF fandom are just as wrong, and just as offensive, as those espoused by people who believe we're all morbidly obese, smelly outcasts in Spock ears. If you're ever willing to leave your desire to campaign at the door of a con and find out what SF fandom is really like, you might have a pretty good time.

Saying "towel-head" does not mark you as a racist. Neither does saying "macaca," or "redneck," or "nigger," or "kike," or "redskin," or "spic," or "gook," or any of the hundreds of other slurs that our language has come up with over time to denigrate people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds. (And every other language on Earth has done the same; I am not an anti-Englishist!) They are words which, like it or not, are in our vocabulary; it's absurd to say that they're so offensive we can't even talk about them.

Calling someone by one of these names marks you as a racist. And Allen has done that; Webb has not. What Webb did was talk about the way the words -- and the attitudes behind them -- are used. Surely the difference isn't so hard to see?

... what do you do when the "protect the Constitution" part of the oath conflicts with the "obey orders" part? And remember the part that goes, "... all enemies foreign and domestic ..."?

That's a choice I never had to make, and I'm thankful for it; I served under Reagan, Daddy Bush, and Clinton, and while I had serious political disagreements with all three of them, I never felt that any of them was a serious threat to the Constitution of the United States of America. I was always willing to accept that I was, in some way, following their orders. But if I were still in uniform now, I'm honestly not sure I could say the same about the chickenhawk deserter currently dishonoring the office of the President by sending other people's kids off to die in the kind of war he never had the guts to fight.

No matter how much you respect the system -- and you should, it's a good system, one which has endured more or less without interruption for over two centuries (yes, yes, there was that little tiff in 1861-1865) and well worth defending -- there has to come a point when you say: No. No sir, we have to stop fighting this war. No, Mr. President, the Constitution comes first. I sincerely hope that every American, especially every American soldier, has that breaking point. Because if not, we're in real trouble.

I'm not saying we've reached that point yet. But we can sure as hell see it from here.

... but America only gets saved once a generation or so. And make no mistake, that's exactly what happened in the elections this year.

Meanwhile, otherwise intelligent people still think football matters. And we wonder why our kids -- about the same age as the kids on the football fields, as it happens, but far tougher and braver than those steroidal brats will ever be -- are dying in America's name half a world away. Maybe if we could get people to pay attention to things that actually count for longer than the time it takes CNN to report the returns on Election Day? Naaah, that's clearly asking too much.