Sad, But True #3

God is female. And she’s cramping.

The Gospel According to Heinlein

There is a story that circulates about an incident while the original Star Trek series was in production. In that story a certain Muslim man observes that the in the futuristic Star Trek universe just about every kind of human and even non-human is represented, except Muslims, and takes offense. When he gets an opportunity to challenge this shortcoming with someone involved in the production of the series he asks why there are no Muslims in the show. The answer? “Because it’s about the future.”

I’ve been trying to track the source of this down for ages because even if it isn’t true, it ought to be. (If you know, drop me a line.)I’ve always been very future-minded and as such a voracious consumer of science fiction (as well as fantasy), which some insist on euphemistically calling speculative fiction. An occupational hazard of being a SF fan is that people are constantly coming up to you excited to the point of incontinence about the latest new thing you had forgotten about years ago. It’s a longer term version of what happens to those of us who get our news on the Internet. You know what I’m talking about, you walked by the newspaper machine on Monday morning, look at the headline, and said, “They’re still talking about that?”

One of the most telling moments in my life was back when the Republican’s Contract with America was big news. Back then Newt Gingrich and that other guy (?) were the masterminds behind it. I’m listening to the news and I hear that they were inspired by a book. I’m cool with that. I’ve been inspired by many books. But, when asked which book it was they come back with an answer that causes the coffee I had been sipping to come shooting out of my nose like a couple of horizontal geysers. It was “The Third Wave” by Alvin Toffler. Folks, I can count on my fingers the number of books that I’ve started and never finished, “The Third Wave” is one of them. It was that lame. As an old SF fan reading that book I could only think something like, “They’re still talking about that?” That was when the book was new, when the Contract people were talking about it, it was 14 years old. Yikes.

So, to me, it comes as no surprise really that just about everything that pops up in the news, Robert Heinlein has written a story about it, or a story similar to it. I don’t recall any stories he wrote about friction with the Islamic world, he may have, but he did write at length about conflict with the communist world. However, since by adding Allah to communism you pretty much get Islam, the lessons can be applied.

First lesson: It’s time for the present members of the “Nuclear Club” to consider the fact that it may be time to stop disassembling nuclear weapons and start reassembling them. If the Islamic world goes nuclear, we won’t be able to depend on Mutually Assured Destruction to stop them. It only worked against the communists because, whatever their faults, they weren’t suicidal. Folks like Lenin and Stalin wanted to live in the world after they conquered it.

Second Lesson: In his writings, Heinlein pointed out that in a conflict against the Asian “hordes” there would be no way that American mothers could produce enough boy babies fast enough to save us. In effect, we needed an equalizer. Now, if we look at the population of the Muslim world in comparison to our own you can still see the “Saracen hordes” that so terrified our ancestors. Now, imagine those superior numbers with the proverbial big stick and crazy enough to use them.

Third Lesson: Even if we weren’t conquered or blackmailed into some kind dhimmitude, we still would have to change our way of life. Whatever our current leadership’s good qualities, the position that “if we change our way of life, then the terrorists win” just won’t cut it. In an age of suitcase nukes we would have to expend considerable energy just to keep from being a good target. In one of Heinlein’s stories, if memory serves me, there was a scenario where the entire nation was being de-urbanized for just that purpose. The cities were being emptied and spread out evenly across the land so that no one place would be better than another for killing people and destroying infrastructure.

Fourth Lesson: We’ve all seen the 20/20 hindsight historian weeping, moaning, and wringing their hands in grief over how blind our ancestors were. How could they have not foreseen the horrific carnage of the Second World War? Didn’t Hitler give us fair warning in his book Mein Kampf? Couldn’t anybody have taken the time to translate his speeches and the abundant Nazi literature into English and spread the word? Weren’t his minions screaming their bloody intentions into every microphone they could find? Why yes, they were, and you’re going to feel really silly trying to explain to your wife’s daughter by the local imam why you weren’t able to apply the lessons of history to blood-smeared fanatics standing in front of burning buildings and cars and holding signs in English that read something like, “Islam will destroy you all”, or “Submit to Allah or die, Infidel!”

The Liberal Lexicon: “B” Words and Phrases

The Definitions

1. B—grade given by professors to classroom goons who are not on any sports team in order to prove that grade-inflation is a myth.
2. Bible, The—Lies! Lies! All lies I tell you.
3. Bigot—Anyone winning an argument with a liberal. (Not original, but still true.)
4. Bipartisanship—when Republicans abandon their principles faster than a horde of Frenchmen running from a bar of soap.
5. Birth Control Pills—medication that should be sold in vending machines at your daughter’s middle school.
6. Border—a usually imaginary line dividing one country from another. Borders are inviolable symbols of sovereignty with the sole exception of the United States.
7. Border Patrol— American Gestapo
8. Boy—future bastard.
9. Bush, George H. W.— son of Satan.
10. Bush, George W.— grandson of Satan