Why I Hate The Wheel Of Time

I don't get around to posting much these days-- blame a busy schedule, a wandering mind, and maybe a dash of apathy-- so when I do, I try to make sure that it's for something important. Something meaningful.

Like "Why I Hate The Wheel of Time."

For those who aren't familiar, The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series by Robert Jordan. It's about a a shepherd named Rand and few friends from his village, who are pulled into big adventures by enchantresses (called Aes Sedai), discover that Rand is actually the prophesied Dragon Reborn, face off against the Dark Lord and all his really bad baddies, and so on, so forth.

My brother talked me into reading these books a while back. I am currently at the very end of Book 4.

I hate them. I'll continue reading them, but I resent them deeply.

Here's why.

1. Everyone is special. Rand is The Dragon Reborn. Okay. I get that. That's the story line. Of course he's special... the book is about this 18 year old kid who suddenly finds out he was special, people want to kill him, he has a role to play in history. Standard stuff. But this gets annoying. Nobody in these books isn't somehow special, in more than that "we're all special and unique" way. Rand is The Dragon Reborn. His girlfriend tags along when he leaves town, and she discovers... that she's one of the most powerful enchantresses ever, but never noticed till now! And his buddy Perrin? When he leaves town, his eyes turn yellow, and he learns that he can speak with wolves and enter a dreamworld. His buddy Mat? He's the reincarnation of some great warrior. Another friend from their tiny village catches up with them down the road and, yup, she's a great enchantress too! Rand meets a girl in a big city, and it turns out she's the princess AND she's one of the greatest enchantresses ever (but didn't know it). Mat meets a wandering musician seemingly at random, but he's that princess's mom's former lover, and a great player of The Great Game (spy stuff, intrigue). Another girl from a warrior clan gets a crush on Rand... and she's also destined to be a great enchantress! A farmer picks up the boys to give them a lift down the road... and later his daughter is at enchantress school! A warrior girl falls in love with Perrin, and later Perrin finds out that she is secretly the cousin of a Queen! And so on, so forth. Everyone is special. Everyone is awesome. If you meet a character for even a moment, you can be assured that they will reappear later with special powers, special skills, that there is something outstanding about them. The characters here never interact with anyone who is less than exceptional.
2. No one isn't special. Sort of the same complaint, but here's the thing: no one isn't special. With everyone being so fantastic, there's no one here is regular, normal, a real human being. Everyone has super powers. And so there's a lack of what you need to make a story real, to make a story feel right. It's why I could never get into Superman-- when you're bullet proof, fly, and can shoot lasers with your eyes, there's nothing "brave" about chasing after the bad guy. The human experience is gone. In these books, there's a lack of the cleverness, courage, and whatnot that might make you identify with a character, fear for them.
3. The good guys are untouchable. For the first four books, at least, don't worry: if you like someone, nothing really bad is going to happen to them. However bizarre or awkward it might seem, Robert Jordan will write a way out for them. A couple of our heroes (not yet in full possession of their powers) are in the jail visiting the creepy prisoner when the castle is attacked by bloodthirsty baddies who set him free? Don't worry. The guards are beheaded, violated, have their guts spread around the room and the walls washed in their blood. Soldiers throughout the castle are torn to shreds. But our two heroes are... knocked on the head. Knocked out. Unconscious. Next to the beheaded, gutted guards! This will happen again and again and again. It's even more obnoxious than the Storm Troopers who always yell "freeze! don't move!" when they've got the drop on Han and the others. They will never, ever pull the trigger, and the baddies will never, ever use the sharp end of the sword when a hero's life is at stake.
4. The characters are unlikeable. Not all of them. I like Perrin. Robert Jordan did a good job with Perrin. He did a decent job with Rand and Mat (you know, aside from the groaner that they ALL have super powers). He did a good job with Thom the wandering musician. Though all of these characters together become too much, they are each on their own fairly well-written. But the female characters (and some of the other males) are horrid. I mean, just terribly written. Insultingly superficial and weak. You get the impression that the author has never met a real, live woman; at least, has never thought to ask one what she thinks, how she feels, how she sees the world. The enchantresses in this book spend lots and lots of time worrying about how they look, trying to figure out how best to control a man, scolding men for bad manners, and fighting with each other over petty nonsense. It is an absolute guarantee that if Nynaeve and Egwene are on the same page, there will be a squabble. No matter what else is going on, no matter how ridiculous it would be for two people to be squabbling in such a situation, there will be squabble. Nynaeve will think that Egwene was rude and will say so, or Egwene will think that Nynaeve is haughty and say so, or someone will roll eyes or pull on her braids in frustration. It's just on and on and on with this crap. Awful.
5. The books are too damn long. Clocking in around a thousand pages each, these books are too long. And I don't mind long books. But these are thousand page books that could have very, very easily been five hundred page books. Really, truly, I would say that close to 400 pages in Book 4 have been wasted on Egwene and Nynaeve rolling their eyes at each other, sniping at each other, Faile telling Perrin not to slouch, Mat pouting in the corner, Elayne wondering if Rand really likes her likes her. Cut all that crap out and not only would you have more likable characters, you'd have a book that flowed better, made more sense, and took half the time to read.
6. Prophecy is annoying. This books is all about Prophecy. And Prophecy can be okay in a book when it's vague, when it plays a secondary role. But these books feel like what I understand the "Left Behind" series to be, with it's "end times checklist" and characters going through the motions, playing the scripted roles they've received. Rand will proclaim. Rand will pull the sword out of the stone. Rand will fight the battle at Toman Head. Rand will gather the Aiel. Et cetera, et cetera. Not a big fan of the pre-ordained plot. This was a bigger problem in the first three books, not as bad in the current book, so maybe it will not continue to be a problem through the series.

And there you go. That's why these books are horrible. Why I can't stand them.

And yet...

I'll continue reading. At least to the end of Book 5 (I went ahead and bought the first five at a used book store, pretty much committed myself). I'll continue reading because, as much as these are not good books, as much as I find myself groaning page after page after page... there's something a little bit compelling about them as well. You find yourself sort of wanting to know what happens next, wanting to get to the conclusion.

Obama's War On Religion

I don't have the patience or the energy to put it nicely: Cal Thomas is off his fucking nut again.

Per Mr. Thomas' new piece this week, once employers are required to cover birth control in health insurance policies, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to forced euthanasia.

It's a slippery slope, you see. A slippery slope.

A slippery slope, or another disjointed right wing fantasy.

You've heard those fantasies before.

"If the gays are allowed to marry, the next thing you know your Aunt Edith will be forced to sodomize billy goats with a Snickers bar."

"Death panels."

And so on.

Slippery slopes that are neither slippery nor slopey nor in any way connected with reality, with the thoughts that normal, grounded, healthy people think.

This stuff-- paranoid fantasies, hate-mongering-- is standard fair for Cal Thomas. Cal Thomas is a despicable person who makes his living bearing false witness. This piece, as insipid as it is, pales in comparison to his meatier stuff, is almost "thoughtful" when put up against his overall record. And so, of course, it should neither surprise me nor get to me.

But this does get to me.

It gets to me not because I'm disappointed in Cal Thomas-- there'd be no reason to expect decency from this guy-- but because Cal Thomas isn't the only one saying it.

I'm disappointed because this theme, this "War On Religion" nonsense, is coming from people who know better, who are better, who are generally genuinely decent.

Michael Gerson, for instance.

Michael Gerson, with whom I often degree, but who has always been decent, thoughtful, articulate, avoiding the shrill hysterics of so many pundits on the right.

In a recent piece, Gerson called Obama's efforts to require employers to cover birth control a "war on religion," "anti-clerical," "an edict delivered with a sneer," motivated by both "radicalism" and "maliciousness."

That's just silliness. Silliness that is beneath Gerson, and beneath so many of the others who have been parroting this crap, crying out that the socialist-elitist-secularist-Islamist-Democrats are making war on Christianity, violating the First Amendment.

Leave this crap to Thomas. Please. To Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin.

Here's the deal, and from where I sit, it seems pretty easy. We'll go through one by one, a little bit at a time.

First of all, cut the shrill tone.

It's bullshit.

It's make believe.

When something like 98% of Catholic women already use birth control, a rule like this is maybe not a reason to go into hysterics. Agree or disagree, but it's not so much an attack on Catholicism.

More than that though, more than the acts of fallen-unclean-unrepetant women making choices their Church has forbidden (and surely they'll be punished for their feminine frailties), the institution-- The Institution-- of the Church has been on board.

Really, cut the hysterics. LeMoyne College-- the Catholic school right down the road here in Syracuse-- LeMoyne College... you know what? They provide insurance which covers birth control. Same with DePaul. Scranton. Christian Brothers. And on and on.

So, Obama's war on religion seems to be in part that he has asked religious institutions to do what they have already been doing.

Agree, disagree. But no hysterics. Seriously. The hysterics are bullshit. They are phony. If the current situation calls for such a backlash, then why nothing-- nothing-- weeks ago, months ago, a year ago, when these institutions could have stopped covering these services at any time?

But I know.

Leave the hysterics aside, and you can still have a disagreement here. A concern.

It doesn't matter what Catholic women do. It doesn't matter what institutions do.

There's a difference between making a decision that goes against your stated beliefs and being required to violate those beliefs.

I get that.

But here's the second part of the deal:

You can't have it both ways.

Do Catholic hospitals accept Medicaid? Public funding?

Does Catholic Charities bill out services to the state like every other non-profit, like the one I work for?

If the answers are "yes"-- and the answers are "yes"-- then the conversation is (or should be) over.

You want the state out of your religious institution? Then keep the state the hell out of your religious institution. It can't go both ways. The Church here is reaching out with one hand and asking for cash, for help, for comingling. And then crying out with shock and dismay and phony righteous indignation when the state expects a little bit of something in return.

If Catholic Charities would like to not follow the rules that the rest of the non-profit world follows, then they should consider becoming, well, a Catholic charity. As is, Catholic Charities is spending my money. My money. My taxes. And I'd like to know that they are behaving responsibly, treating women fairly, acting decently.

It goes farther, though.

The local soft-spoken but still full of sweet bile Sean Hannity wannabe on the local conservative radio station here in Syracuse (I detest this guy, in part because he replaced a truly decent Libertarian who was canned after 25 years because he wasn't willing to lick Limbaugh's nipples on air every day) made a nice point the other day.

He didn't mean to. He was saying something else. But it works.

The First Amendment, he pointed out, isn't about religious institutions.

The First Amendment.

It goes like this:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

No institutions even mentioned in there, local-Hannity said.

His point: providing exemptions to faith-based employers isn't enough. Because the Constitution doesn't say that the free exercise of religion is guaranteed to employers. It says that the free exercise of religion is guaranteed to people.

If the Catholic Church is not required to cover birth control, he argues, then what about the Catholic believer? The Catholic believer who owns a grocery store, or a book store, or a garage? Why should that employer be prohibited from the free exercise of his faith?

It's a line of thinking that has already been out there in conservative circles. There should be an allowance, people say, for people to do their jobs and live their lives without conflicting with their values.

The argument is almost always around standard conservative social issues-- it's almost always about birth control, abortion, gay marriage. Believers shouldn't have to accept these realities, dirty their hands in the sin. The clerk a couple towns over shouldn't be required to give a marriage license to the lesbians who want to get married, even though gay marriage is legal in New York State and marriage licenses are the clerk's job. The evangelical pharmacist shouldn't have to fill a prescription for birth control pills, even though this might look like "discrimination" or bigotry.

So, here's the thing.

Let's keep going.

Let's not make this about conservatives or Catholics or evangelicals.

Let's put local-Hannity's ideas to work, let's share them, spread it equitably.

Nobody should have to do anything they don't like. Anything they don't believe in. Laws should apply to only those who agree with them.

Religious exemptions.

Certain Mormons-- those who still go for polygamy on religious conviction-- should be allowed to marry as often as they like. All these laws about "one man, one woman" or even "two people, whatever they be" are just anti-Mormon bigotry. We shouldn't prohibit the free exercise of religion, and Mormons can choose to marry as they like.

And what's the deal with all this furor over Warren Jeffs? I mean, sex with underage girls, legal age of consent? This was all clearly taking place in a religious community with a different view of things. Let's not impose our beliefs.

Keep going.

Rastafarians should never, ever be arrested for smoking pot. Marijuana has a deep spiritual significance to many Rastas.

Quakers should not pay a dime in taxes as long as any of that tax money goes to military spending. It's pretty clearly established that Quakers are pacifists (Nixon notwithstanding). I mean, that's half of what Quakers are all about. To expect them to fund things that they do not believe in... well, it's kind of exactly like asking Catholics to pay into a system that provides birth control.

Me? I guess I'm calling myself a Zen Buddhist these days, and though it's kind of hard to pin down a stance on social issues to solidly one way or the other in the Zen community, vegetarianism and veganism are pretty common themes in Buddhism generally and Zen specifically, and my own veganism is very tied in with the precepts and interbeing and such at this point in my life. You could say it's a religious conviction. So I don't feel good about paying taxes that go to subsidize the beef, dairy, pork, poultry, and fishing industries. I want an exemption. And more than that. It violates my convictions to provide my staff with a half-hour lunch break when I know damn well that they are running out to McDonald's and Taco Bell and doing all sorts of sin-y things that I don't like. I want to be able to establish an "eat vegan or don't eat on my clock" rule at the office.

You see how this works?