A former reporter is appalled by the insensitive toys she chose to purchase (h/t Isegoria):

After the arrival of the Playmobil fort, I tried to explain to my son that the Native Americans were protecting themselves and reacting to the expansion of American settlers into their land. My kids attend a school where they learn that the Native Americans were forced into California Missions and mistreated. Even in preschool they learn about civil rights and the fight of Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers. So I thought that dealing with this would be no problem.

But putting out a set with pioneers and Indians killing each other without any context for the 5-year-old that will be playing with it is reckless. I'm sure not every kid who opens that fort is getting a lecture about Native Americans. And yes, we do live in liberal San Francisco. When my son talks about getting a Playmobil wedding set, I'm sure he wouldn't be at all surprised if the set had two men or two women on the altar. Now that is something I'd like to see, Playmobil.

PJ Media's David Solway has a column up arguing Obama's presidency only makes sense when viewed through the lens of Cloward-Piven.

"seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse." Choking the welfare rolls would serve to generate a political and financial meltdown, "break the budget, jam the bureaucratic gears into gridlock, and bring the system crashing down." The fear, turmoil and violence accompanying such a debacle would provide the 'perfect conditions for fostering radical change.

In other words, politics as a continuation of war by other means.

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

2. Don't think that you can reason your way out of it. Most people have the causality backwards. They think the purge is taking place due to whatever it is that they did or said. That's not the case. It is taking place because of who you are and what you represent to them. The truth is that the faction behind your prospective purge already wanted you out and they are simply using the nominal reason given as an excuse to get rid of you. [....]

3.Do not apologize! They will press you hard for an apology and repeatedly imply that if you will just apologize, all will be forgiven. Don't be fooled! They are simply looking for a public confession that will confirm their accusations, give them PR cover, and provide them with the necessary ammunition to expel you. Apologizing does nothing more than hand them the very weapon they are seeking.

Well worth the read given that these days you never know when you may find your reputation and your livelihood being sacrificed to the great gods Diversity and Tolerance. So it goes in what passes for 21st Century America.

A ruling class and its courtiers living well in the capitol district as the outer provinces commoner struggles. The panopticon surveillance of citizens. A state so monstrously indifferent it's ruined the healthcare of millions. A feral bureaucracy waging a shadow war against its master regime's enemies. And a supposedly free people, themselves either so inattentive or corrupt, that they allowed it all to happen.

Fifteen years ago, this would have been an interesting exercise in science fiction world-building. Now, not only is that world built, but we're trapped in it.

To be sure, dystopian SF is fun. At least in fiction, the bad guys have a chance of getting their just comeuppance, the loathsome order they've imposed often falling by the end of such works. And it's easy to see why authors like writing it: not only does it fit with the zeitgeist, the genre almost by default makes the protagonist's cause heroic and the stakes high.

But I'd like to see some brighter vision of the future, too. What a novel experience it would be, reading something recently published that was set someplace one wouldn't mind their children living in. Stories where the society is worth protecting. Where a majority of your fellow citizens aren't one class of ungrateful parasite or another, where the press doesn't constantly lie to you, where "govern" isn't a polite euphemism for "bully".

I realize that this wishlist reads like a recipe for utopianist fantasy. That's more a sign of how far gone modern America is than a reflection on the request's merit.

How about it, authors. Coming up with a future more worthy than the present's slow-motion apocalypse--it doesn't get any easier than that.

I read somewhere that what makes vampires such terrifying archetypes is how they compound loss and betrayal. They murder someone you care for and then, a few nights hence, your loved one rises again. It's a lie, though--the person you cared for is dead. The monster that remains just wears their face like a mask until it can kill you, or make you into something like it.

It's a fitting analogy for our own age. Sure there's still a resemblance, elections being the most obvious, but is the country you're living in now still the place you grew up loving? Would the place you loved have so many people in it that vote themselves your paycheck? Would it spy on you constantly? Maybe what you loved got killed at some point, and you didn't quite notice. Whether it was 2008, the Patriot Act's passage, the New Deal or sometime else, the date of death doesn't matter. We've got more immediate problems.

Like the vampire, the thing pretending to be what you loved will try to turn convert you where it can. "Here, sign-up for some gubmint sugar, be a dependent slug." "Hey, believe what we say--you don't want people thinking you're a bigot." And so on. Where it can't, it'll try to destroy you as evidenced by the disgusting Lois Lerner.

In some vampire movies--thinking of 80's flicks like "Near Dark", "The Lost Boys" and "Fright Night"--vampirism can be reversed. This is how many a conservative views America. "Sure she's been turned into this loathsome thing that's trying to kill us, but we can totally change her back!!" By contrast, in the Stephen King masterpiece "Salem's Lot" you can't change the girl back. The only choices are running for your life, or sticking a stake in her heart and ending the lie.

It's easy to see which scenario makes for the more realistic horror story. Easy to see, too, which more closely matches where we are in real life.

Behold, America as seen through a Honda Civic ad:

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7fNE/2014-honda-civic-today-is-pretty-great-song-by-vintage-trouble

It begins with flashed images of an anchorman broadcasting bad news, a trash heap, and a bankruptcy court, all to the sung words, "Today is pretty sad." It then backs away from the truth with a pretty girl saying that "there are great things too." By its tenth second, we're full-auto rainbows and unicorns as zany SWPL's tell the viewer how "today is actually pretty great!"

What makes today great? "Giving back," says a girl with a clipboard looking vaguely eco-conscious. "Being accepted for who you are," says a cosplay chick while walking to ComicCon. "What about chemistry?" says some Pajama Boy with a middlingly attractive blonde who in the real world would have friendzoned him at "hi".

Give them credit for putting yards of lipstick on the swine that passes for the American economy. Sure there's ruin all around you. But today is still pretty awesome!!1! Unemployed as you Millenials are, you've lots of time to give back to the society that has pissed away your future. Maybe you can volunteer for OFA and register suckers for Obamacare. That'll fill your days.

And hey, you can be accepted for who you are. Too bad who you are hasn't any prospect of making more than your parents. But at least you can wear costumes or onesies. Embrace your inner infant. Jobs and futures are adult stuff, and you've got neither.

We're half-a-decade into a supposed recovery, and this is what passes for the good life now? This is the best we can expect? This is what makes life pretty great?

Are you kidding me? This isn't the American Dream. It's not even a consolation prize.

An artist I once knew told me how she loved it whenever she saw a mistake in a painting or drawing. The smudged charcoal or the not quite perfectly blended stroke of acrylic, she explained, was the fingerprint of the artist. It let you know someone real had created it.

I'd loved the idea of "artist's fingerprints" ever since, whether they're goofs in movies or prose. An example: Watson tells us in the first Sherlock Holmes story of how he took a Jezail bullet in the shoulder, but in a later novel he says it's his leg. How cool is that little bit of incongruity, especially in the canon of the most precise character to ever grace fiction?

Easy to forgive and even celebrate artistic fingerprints of others, though. A little harder for oneself, it turns out.

In my introductory story here at Liberty Island, "The Wreck of the Hu Jintao", our protagonist tells us, "It takes oxygen to fire a bullet. On either wrist I had sealed-system gun barrels, each capable of firing a single round." An acquaintance of mine helpfully emailed me yesterday, "Loved your story, but you can fire a gun in outer space because gunpowder contains its own oxidizer. Sorry."

After confirming this with a two second Google search, a question presented itself: email the LI editors about a correction or let the mistake stand? It'd be easy to fix. All it would take is striking the sentence about needing oxygen to fire a bullet. Most readers won't know the difference, but if it stays it'll cost me credibility with those that do. I can't think of any reason in the world to leave it in.

Except that it's a fingerprint.

I may yet change it. I probably should. But for the time being, it'll stay.

Ultimately, Mal Reynolds is a man that just wants to be left the hell alone. He fought a war for that right, and though the hostilities officially ended with his side losing, he continued to dispute the issue in the way he lived. I like that fierce independence--a desire not to rule or be ruled, but simply to live on his own terms, and the willingness to fight as best he can those that would try not to let him.

In an increasingly feminized culture, it was also a surprise to see so proudly a masculine character. In contrast to our modern Rules of Oprah where no behavior, regardless how disgusting or antisocial, can be judged save judging the disgusting and antisocial, Mal wasn't afraid to pass judgment. Take Mal's interactions with the lovely Inara, a high status registered companion to the wealthy and powerful. Mal never hesitated to call her a whore. Unkind to be sure, especially considering how good a person Inara was. Yet Mal's slur, one gets the sense, was said out of caring: cruel but true words meant not simply to hurt, but by hurting to push someone worth saving towards a better path. I like that brute force honesty, and the intention behind it. Sometimes a father has to be tough to better the child. Sometimes to make a better society you have to tell people unhappy truths, their hurt feelings be damned.

I like too Mal's morality: "Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill 'em right back." Do unto others as they do unto you. He practiced what he preached, kicking a crime lord's chief enforcer into an starship engine when the killer continued vowing vengeance on Mal's crew. A refreshing counterpoint to the hyper-Golden Rule naivety of mainstream superheroes that spare mass murderers like The Joker because... why? That they can one day break free and kill more people? Mal's code will save more lives in the long run than one like Batman's.

Malcolm Reynolds isn't due to be born until 2468. I wouldn't mind seeing more of his spirit today, though.

The gun porn, unnecessary (yet appreciated) female nudity, excellent writing, and fine acting by Ace of Spades HQ fan Nick Searcy all combine to make Justified one of my favorite shows. This season is off to good start... and yet its new bad guys leave me cold. (Please observe your official spoiler warning.)

Some background: while the show centers around Raylan Givens and his perpetual antagonist, Boyd Crowder, there's always another major bad guy that serves as the backdrop against which their dramas play out. FX's promos have been featuring Raylan being swarmed by crows, so the Crowe family's newly arrived Florida branch, relatives of local comic relief Dewey Crowe, looks like this season's Big Bad.

Yet I find them uncompelling. A bunch of violent dullards, one Crowe brother killed someone in this season's first episode for making fun of his stutter. In this week's episode, another Crowe killed the Haitian (who had the makings of a great villain) over an insult, hooting as he blasted buckshot into the man's back like an extra from Idiocracy. Meanwhile Daryl, the Crowe patriarch, decides to mix it up with Boyd--the county's crime lord--for supposedly getting too much from idiot cousin Dewey in the sale of a whore house. I get that this is supposed to show each Crowe is proud to a fault, but after so many needlessly poor decisions, you start to wonder if mama Crowe was putting lead paint chips in the boys' bottles growing up.

I don't mind coarse--Justified has had lots of those villains. But the combination of coarse and stupid? I get enough of that when I read my decayed hometown's local news: one bit of trash shoots another because, well, why the hell not? Rinse, repeat.

I have no doubt the Crowes will raise all kinds of havoc in Harlan County. I have no doubt the writing and acting will continue to be crisp. But I doubt I'll enjoy it as much as in seasons past. Violent and dumb in Kentucky hills reminds me too much of its asphalt analog.