Itâs a really weird time to be re-reading Another Country.
Or, as the new version has been renamed, What You Wish For.
Between when Theamh and Aine get into the Cretid Nation and when Theamh gets herself captured at Greenhaven, so much of the plot of Another Country is about police brutality, protesting, and riots. All of this was based on the Rodney King beating and its aftermath, which happened in 1991 (Another Country was started, I think, sometime around 1998). And itâs the hardest part of the series for me to reread, because I just get mad at myself for how I handled all of it.Â
This time around Iâve been trying to be kinder to myself and remember that it was the 1990s and that I was doing work that had to be done so that I could be less stupid in the future. I can see now that one of the things that this section of Another Country did was allow me to work through my own white fragility in a way that wouldnât hurt people. Theamh has all kinds of culture shock when she gets to the Cretid Nation and spends a lot of time desperately trying to process it fast enough to avoid alienating all the people trying to help her. Sheâs often not good at it, and Kwenu, Tyrna, and Lara are all really much too patient with her.Â
Aineâs vision of Rett Deaconâs murder starts a process which eventually turns into a full-blown riot not unlike what is going on in a lot of American cities right now; and then after Aine and Istria bust Theamh out of Greenhaven they head over the border, leaving the South Corner to burn. Tyrna tells them to go, citing the fact that Theamh is in no shape to fight. Looking back on it now I prefer to understand Tyrnaâs dismissal as strategic rather than compassionate. Theamh and Aine are loose cannons whose defiance keeps provoking the state, whose retaliatory violence rebounds not on them but on Tyrna and the people she serves. Of course Tyrna wants them to go home.
I wrote what I wrote and the books are the books. But itâs always a relief for me to get into Greenhaven. As painful as that part of the book is, Iâm writing about things that Iâm competent to handle. I try to understand the evils of my own country. I do. But my comprehension always fails. Itâs always so much worse than Iâm able to imagine.
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WOF reread 2020: Fnaa hits the Fan at the Craoibh Oir
So, I eventually got this out of my system, but for a long time I really enjoyed writing episodes in which a fancy affair goes horribly wrong. When you send a shriia and her apprentice into a dinner party for rich people, of course shitâs gonna happen. Rereading this now gave me a lot of feelings, of many different kinds.
So as I have said before, Iâm not an outliner. When first writing something, I typically donât see more than a couple moves ahead in terms of plotting. I can go back later and tie things together better (and TC benefits from multiple revisions over time, including the post-Better To Burn revision in which I retconned what was necessary to retcon about Keanrihâs backstory); but often subplots and whatnot emerge more or less spontaneously. What I am, though I say it myself, good at is taking these unexpected plot points and weaving them into the rich tapestry so that you eventually get a good payoff from them. Mielenâs pregnancy is a perfect example of that. Initially Mielen was introduced, mainly, for character development and exposition; because she and Theamh are old friends, we find out some more about Theamhâs life before the Order through her, and we also get to find out more about Lileaâs extraordinary abilities (which are less flashy and easy to demonstrate than Theamhâs). And of course sheâs important as one of the dots that Theamh connects as she realizes that all the mothers this is happening to are apparently wealthy. But the dinner party chapters reward you for slogging through all that with the epic scene of Mielenâs mother Geraine calling scrainnte on Delth in the middle of Ulnachâs dinner party.
When I first wrote this I was mainly interested in the possibiltiies of this dramatic eruption of the real social through the veneer of fake sociality created by the dinner party. Geraine asks her friends to act like a community instead of just a club, and for everyone there who understands the value of community--a group which now includes Theamh, because sheâs in the Order--the collective failure to come through for Geraine is sickening and shameful. Ulnach and the rest of the guests, however, care more about preserving politeness and manners and a kind of sinister solidarity according to which people with money each agree to pretend that the others are virtuous.Â
Now, of course, it is not lost on me that scrainnte is used, the only two times we really see it being used in WOF, to do exactly what the #metoo movement tried to do: to create accountability for men who engage in sexual behavior which is obviously harmful but which is difficult to address legally. In the case of Istriaâs father, of course, heâs violating a direct commandment from Idair and also breaking the law; but Varen wonât allow the law into her house, so Istria turns to scrainnte because thatâs accessible to her and the law isnât. But with Delth, it would obviously be very difficult to prosecute him. Mindforcing is illegal, but difficult to prove especially months after the fact. Because it was the result of mindforcing, Delthâs rape of Mielen involved no violence and she did not openly resist him, which means thereâs no material evidence that she didnât consent. However, everyone in Theamhâs culture understands that people can be mindforced into having sex and that this is wrong; and scrainnte is a tool that communities use to deal with bad actors whose crimes are widely known but who canât be legally punished.Â
All of which makes Ulnachâs refusal to hear Geraine even more despicable. Geraine appeals to her as a woman and a mother--âIf it were your daughter you would do the sameâ--but Ulnach is only thinking about how much she wants this disruption to end. Sheâs so worried about maintaining her social position, so afraid of being unmasked as âcountryâ--like Geraine, sheâs the first in her line to get âoff the dirtâ--that she turns on her best friend. Mielen grew up with Theamh and Theamh was at one point affianced to Geraineâs son Edraw. This is an important friendship that Ulnach has blown up here. But of course she blames Theamh, the âwalking social catastrophe,â for accidentally introducing this ugly truth into her world instead of herself for betraying a true and sustaining relationship for the foolâs gold of popularity.Â
At the end of that chapter, Theamh and Aine have this conversation:
âThese are your people?â she demanded. âThis is where you come from?â
âYes,â I said.
âYour father trades with na Fir mac Lir and your mother wonât answer a townswoman,â she said. âYour people are blaspheming, exploiting, self-gratifying cowards with no sense of compassion or community.â
âWell, you didnât catch them at their best.â
âThatâs what you brought me there to learn.â
âI wouldnât put it that way, but...â
âThis is what wealth does to people.â
âIn my experience, yes.â
She stood in thought for a moment.
âDhiaoc?â
âYes, Aine?â
âWere you a foster-child?â
I smiled, not without sadness. âNo, Aine. I have Athiâs coloring and Mathiâs face. Iâm theirs all right.â
The young are harsh. In the nearly 3 decades since I wrote this novel, my relationship with my mother has mellowed out. But whatâs going on with this pandemic has really given this conversation a sharper point for me. All of this having people over for drinks during a pandemic...my motherâs doing this because all her friends are doing it and she doesnât want to be left out of it, because this fake sociality is more important to her than doing what her community actually needs, which is social distancing. Granted, she now has some mild cognitive impairment as a result of these mini-strokes we didnât know she was having, which is yet ANOTHER reason why she should be vigilant about her exposure to the coronavirus...but this is not new behavior. This whole erosion of community spirit in pandemic America is more visible amongst the non-college-educated; but many of the vilest âprotestâ groups are being banrkolled and encouraged by wealthy groups and families like the DeVos family in Michigan. My mother was raised Catholic and has always done volunteer work amongst those she sees as less fortunate; but that has not given her the sense of community which is so obviously missing in this scene, and which would perhaps inspire her to modify her behavior in order to protect her own household and the health of her friends.Â
Wow. Between âAlways the Last To Know,â âReady or Not,â and âSafe Home,â Theamh is having herself one SHITTY day.
There is just...so much Old School Lesbian trauma packed into this sequence. Theamhâs religion refusing to acknowledge her relationship with Istria and excluding her from the service (or trying). The estrangement from her family, which her mother also doesnât want to really acknowledge. The drama and danger of Ilwath being outed to her father. Parental attempts to âcureâ things that donât in fact need to be cured. And Theamh is there as the mentor I never had, helping Owdan try to adjust. That moment where she looks around the house and says, well, this is going to be OK...âHe loved her; and heâd learn.â That really is the story...most of the time. Not always.Â
Also: Check out Ulnach trying to make Theamh shrimarbh, and this apparently a Regular Thing! Later events will cast a different light on this; Ulnach has private and specific reasons for believing that Theamh is putting herself on a certain path to destruction by being a shriia, and from Darkness Bright itâs clear that she believes that going shrimarbh woudl be the only way for Theamh to stay alive long term. But...damn.Â
I had a conversation with Mrs. P about half an hour ago regarding the attitude toward antidepressants that is on view in this part of the plot. Essentially, it hasnât really changed: antidepressants work well for some people, but I donât think they would help me. I already knew people who were on Prozac when I wrote this chapter; in fact, if memory serves, I had just started talk therapy for the first time. I have clear memories of writing the whole Welbin episode in my parentsâ house in Maine, after a conversation with my mother in which, fortified by the work I had done in therapy thus far, I was able to see the springs and mechanisms that were moving that conversation in a way I never had before.
This chapter, obviously, trained me to write âFive Dirty Minutes in the Dark,â which is written from Holmesâs POV while heâs going under after being chloroformed. A lot of work I did for WOF got repurposed for fanfiction much later.Â
So, my exercise program progresses very slowly; but Iâve finished chapter 4, âDonât Ask, Donât Tell,â in which we see Theamh do siuilin for the first time.
Itâs interesting to go back and look at a younger Theamh created by a much younger me. I gotta say: the Council does kind of have a point. She makes a lot of mistakes in this chapter when it comes to dealing with people. But some readers said that this chapter was really important in making Theamh feel real to them, perhaps partly for that reason.Â
Ruminations below.
First of all, siuilin sets things up so that people who come to consult the shriia have zero privacy, something about which Theamh could definitely stand to be more sensitive. Owdan, Ilwathâs as-yet-unnamed father, gets into it with her and she winds up really going after him in front of other people, and her embarrassign him like that undoubtedly contributes to his taking Ilwath to see the medicals (an idea she actually gives him). So she is partly responsible for what happens to Ilwath later. She switches to sending with Kitth when she realizes whatâs going on, but sheâs not consistent about it.Â
Also, I donât think Theamh really gets how unusual she is, as a shriia. Like, she knows people think sheâs weird, but she doesnât understand the full extent of it. She really sees it as part of her job to reveal her own truth during these readings, which is not something any of the shriias who trained her typically do. So she makes herself much more vulnerable to these communities than is normal, and that has pluses and minuses.
Itâs been a while since I read the story of Sincil and Anronâs wedding. It really brought back my memories of going to all those straight weddings in the 1990s--alone, because Mrs. P made a point of refusing to go to a lot of them--and watching everyone enjoy what we could (we thought) never have. Although Sincil and Anron are techincally a straight couple, they have kind of a queer wedding: improvisational, personalized, focused on the coupleâs own vows (made up on the spot). I also kind of enjoyed, in a new way, Idairâs exasperation with both of them. Idair isnât out to herself; but she says to them at one point, âyou donât know the difference between love and shame?â She shows them why they donât have to feel ashamed before sheâs willing or ready to show that to herself.Â
Poor Theamh...she has such a long journey to go on. But she will be OK in the end.Â
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CONN: Senator Collins just announced that she was going to vote to call witnesses.
PLAIDDER: Thatâs still only 48 people IF Manchin doesnât do his fucking Manchin thing. Go away.
ETHIR: Donât talk to him that way.
PLAIDDER: It gets worse!
ETHIR: I have a question and I really need to know the answer right now.
PLAIDDER: I guess in cyberspace itâs always time for freagair.
ETHIR: Who in the green earth or under it is Alan Dershowitz?
PLAIDDER: Ethir. This is unworthy of you. The night before all hope is lost, you come into my house and you ask me to dredge up from the cesspool into which they have subsided my totally 80s memories of celebrity lawyer, self-appointed gadfly, and massive narcissist Alan Dershowitz?!
ETHIR: I do.
PLAIDDER: Ethir, last night I saw Just Mercy, a film based on a real-life case in which a young lawyer named Bryan Stevenson devoted years of his life to obtaining a new trial for an innocent man who was framed by corrupt racist cops for a crime he didnât commit, prosecuted for that crime by a corrupt racist DA, and given a bonus death sentence by a corrupt racist judge. Unlike most real-life stories in which underfunded young lawyers take on entire power structures, this one actually has a happy ending, and an innocent man whoâs spent six years on death row for no good reason is eventually returned to his family. I think you should get a bucket of popcorn and some caffeine-free soda and go watch this movie. You will enjoy it.
ETHIR: But--
PLAIDDER:Â I want you to go watch that movie, and then I want you to come back here. And then, when I tell you that Alan Dershowitz got famous in the 1980s for finding a way to get the conviction of a European billionaire who most likely murdered his diabetic wife thrown out and get him a new trial at which he was acquitted based on problems with handling of the evidence, and then gave a dinner party to celebrate which Alan Dershowitz attended and wrote about in his book Reversal Of Fortune which by the way was made into a TV movie in 1990 which I actually to my everlasting shame saw--when I tell you all this, and then tell you that Alan Dershowitz thinks that makes him Bryan fucking Stevenson, you will fully understand my rage.Â
ETHIR: All right.
PLAIDDER: In the meantime, can we not talk about how Alan Dershowitzâs narcissism has set fire to the last shreds of our Constitution?
CONN: But thatâs exactly what Iâm most hopeful about.
PLAIDDER: That...BLOWHARD forgot that heâs not in a damn trial court where the worst he could do to the world is set one rich and guilty asshole free. To satisfy his insatiable fucking ego, that man just burned down the rule of law.
CONN: No, he didnât. Thatâs what Iâm trying to tell you. Heâs actually made things better.
PLAIDDER: This oughta be good.
CONN: All along weâve been talking about that moment when everyone stops pretending. The moment when people just drop the mask for good and all and they just stop caring about whether people see their atrocities or not. We talked about that in July when that Congressional delegation went to see the detention camps at the border. You must have a clip of that somewhere.
PLAIDDER: OK, I found it:
CONN: Their lack of fear, thatâs the worst sign. The fact that they donât fear exposure. The fact that theyâre not worried about the rest of the world finding out what theyâve done. Because that tells you that they know theyâre protected. And that means they have no reason to stop. Not just that. They have no reason not to make it worse. No reason not to invent new indignities. No reason not to entertain themselves with making more misery.
PLAIDDER: Thatâs something Iâve always been afraid of. The moment when the state decides it doesnât have to pretend any more. Theamh is afraid of that moment tooâyou knowâon the magical side. Thatâs why that battle at Slieve was so important. It forced the corrupt government to go on pretending for a while. As long as they were pretending, there were certain limits to what they were able to do. Theamh and everyone else worked so hard to keep those limits in place.
CONN: Youâre right to be afraid of that moment. Â
CONN: And youâre afraid that this moment has now come.
PLAIDDER: It has. This is it. 53 Republican Senators--
CONN: Fifty-two--
PLAIDDER: Conn, you are on my LAST NERVE tonight. Fifty-two Republican Senators are about to vote to endorse the idea that the President can rig an election and nobody can do a thing about it.
CONN: No. They wonât be. Because Dershowitz and friends have already retracted that argument.
PLAIDDER: They canât retract it now. Fox News has a hold of it. The Republican Senators have a hold of it. Itâs out there and itâs going to become the new normal.
CONN: Youâre not listening to me. THEY WALKED IT BACK. They realized they HAD to walk it back. Because 53 Republican Senators are not ready for this moment.
PLAIDDER: I bet 51 of them are.
CONN: No. That...circus act...that your President calls a legal team has withdrawn that defense because they now realize that these Republican Senators still want to pretend. And where thereâs pretense, thereâs hope.
PLAIDDER: Yeah, well I just refreshed the WaPo page and we lost Lamar Alexander, so Iâm gonna go scream into the night now.
CONN: Thereâs still--
PLAIDDER: Donât you get it? These assholes have got together and worked out exactly how itâs going to go down and what will happen is that they will let Collins, Murkowski and Romney vote for witnesses so thereâs a 50-50 tie and then Roberts will refuse to cast the tiebreaking vote and there will be no witnesses and the whole thing will be over tomorrow. These people are not taking a stand, they are saving face in the most weaselly way possible.Â
CONN: But surely you realize that it doesnât matter any more whether they call witnesses or not.
PLAIDDER: I DO NOT realize that.
CONN: They donât have to make Bolton testify. As soon as Alan Dershowitz made that argument, he admitted that your President has done everything heâs been accused of. Everyone saw that, everyone knows that. Anyone who will ever be willing to vote for removal will vote for removal now. And the people who will never be willing to vote for removal will never be convinced no matter how many witnesses you call.
PLAIDDER: So this is it. He gets acquitted. And I SWEAR TO GOD if you say ânot yetâ ONE MORE TIME--
CONN: All right, I wonât say it.
PLAIDDER: You wonât?
CONN: No. I wonât. Acquittal is what you always expected. Thatâs is what you always knew was probably going to happen.
PLAIDDER: BUT YOU TOLD ME NOT YET!!!
CONN: MAKE UP YOUR MIND! Or let me go back into the void! I never asked to be dragged out here to this horrible place.
PLAIDDER: Yeah, Iâm not gonna watch any more of my favorite characters go through the door to oblivion tonight, friend.
CONN: 67 votes for removal was always an unrealistic threshold. Itâs never been done before, I understand.
PLAIDDER: No.
CONN: Trust me when I say this, friend. They overreached. That always has consequences.
PLAIDDER: How can they overreach when they are about to take a vote that will ensure that their party will always have unlimited power?
CONN: Thatâs not what that vote is going to ensure.
PLAIDDER: Then what will it ensure?
CONN: That your president never gets a second term. And neither will many of them.Â
PLAIDDER: Why should I believe you?
CONN: Look at what the Democrats in Congress have been able to do. They dragged that mac na mhada to the brink of removal. Where is your appreciation for Adam Schiff, who got up there day after day and told the actual truth?
PLAIDDER: You mean the âyou know you canâtâ speech.
CONN: Yes. That and many others. Because the thing is: they DO know they canât. They definitely know that now.Â
PLAIDDER: What does it matter? They will never cross him.
ETHIR: Hey, Iâm back.
PLAIDDER: So you see what I mean about Alan Dershowitz.
ETHIR: Actually I saw something totally different.
PLAIDDER: What?
ETHIR: You know that scene where Ralph Myers takes the stand at that hearing and he tells everyone that he lied at that first trial?
PLAIDDER: Yes.
ETHIR: And heâs scared to do it. But once he does it, you can see the whole man come back to life. Heâs told the truth and now no matter what happens to him, he doesnât care, because heâs alive now. I mean you wrote our story but you spend all your time on the shriias, youâve never really thought about how ordinary people experience the truth. I will tell you, Iâve seen a lot of people lie in court and Iâve seen a lot of people tell the truth and there is no comparison. Telling the truth is magic for us too. Itâs...itâs being alive.
PLAIDDER: Anthony Scaramucci, of all people, has said as much.
ETHIR: I wish Theamh could have seen Slythe during the trial. She would have been so proud of her. Still an ordinary woman, but once she caught a hold of the truth again she never let it go. She understood it better than I can explain it. You could see it when you looked at her. I think she knew there was a good chance they would kill her. But it was worth it to her, just for that feeling of being alive. Humans are humans. They need joy. They need to feel alive.Â
PLAIDDER: How are you making me cry when I donât believe EITHER of you?
CONN: Itâs like your Nancy Pelosi always says. Patience and time.
PLAIDDER: That was Kutuzov in War and Peace.
CONN: Well she doesnât say it. But she knows it. She dragged this process out as long as she could safely drag it and what can be exposed has been exposed. Whatever happens tomorrow, you got more out of this than anyone expected. Be mindful of that. And just...be all right. All right?
PLAIDDER: All right. I guess this will be our last episode.
PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to the first episode of our spinoff of This Fucking Impeachment: This Fucking Trial. In it, we will discuss the trial phase of Buttercupâs impeachment, which is taking place in the Senate, aka The Greatest Deliberative Body On Earth. With me in the studio is...rather unexpectedly, Ethir mac Briobh. Hello Ethir, did I invite you?
ETHIR: No, you invited Conn, but he really needs a personal day.
PLAIDDER: I bet he does. How many Nauchtian breakfast stacks has he eaten in the past 48 hours?
ETHIR: He asked me not to tell you.Â
PLAIDDER: Iâm eating a scone right now, I have no wish to judge. All right, well, everyone, meet Ethir mac Briobh, another upstanding Ideiren public servant and also a celebrity lawyer and extremely popular law professor. Welcome to this mess, Ethir.Â
ETHIR: I wish I could say I was pleased to be here.
PLAIDDER: I know. Itâs a fucking mess, isnât it? Iâve been thinking all day about that trial at Mypril. Iâm sure you have too.
ETHIR: Actually, I was thinking about Slytheâs trial.Â
PLAIDDER: Really.
ETHIR: Iâd rather go through that circus in Mypril 1000 times than go through Slytheâs trial again ONCE. But thatâs the one I think of as I watch this. You think the worst thing that could happen would be for your president to get off scot free. But there are worse outcomes.
PLAIDDER: Uh...yay?
ETHIR: Iâm sorry. Iâm not as resilient as Conn is.
PLAIDDER: Well, we canât all be.Â
ETHIR: I suppose your...viewers...wonât necessarily know about Slytheâs trial.Â
PLAIDDER: A brief summary might be helpful.
ETHIR: She had been accused of practicing dark magic. Her trial was intended to function as cover for the people who were really responsible for corrupting the Order. To make sure nothing went wrong, the Seat voted to change the rules so that magic users could sit on the jury--which we normally donât allow, for reasons you know, and which your readers donât care about. This way, they could put enough corrupt people on the jury to ensure a guilty verdict and everything that entailed.Â
PLAIDDER: You sound kind of stiff, Ethir. Are you OK? Is it just that I havenât written you for a while?
ETHIR: Take how Conn feels right now and double that and thatâs how bad it feels to me to talk about any of this.
PLAIDDER: I appreciate your being here. So.
ETHIR: Well, I knew the game was rigged. Iâm not stupid. But I just thought--I mean their case was terrible. Itâs hard enough to get a conviction in a dark magic case even when the defendantâs guilty. And Slythe, you know, she wasnât like Theamh, she didnât make enemies. Excuse--
PLAIDDER: I wonât take it personally.
ETHIR: Everyone who knew Slythe at all liked her. And then the way she stood up and denounced them all during the debate--you know--she was riding high, in terms of the ordinary people, she became a very popular figure. So much easier to love than Morat. I thought, Iâm a good lawyer and a good speaker and if I just do my job well enough then theyâll just HAVE to acquit her. Theyâll realize itâll be worse in the long run if they donât. And anyway, sheâs my client, sheâs a thurking hero already, and a good defense is about the only thing anyone can give her right now that matters. So I went out there and I crushed it. I did, donât laugh--
PLAIDDER: I know you did, Ethir.
ETHIR: There were more spectators in the courtroom every day. The Cretid repeaters showed up with their cameras. I was RIVETING. Every time I looked over at the findersâ box the ordinary people were just radiating empathy for her. Those dark-hearted bitches sitting amongst them were a different story, but I thought, you know, they have to deliberate before they find. They wonât want to have to show their hand. I suppose they could mindforce the other finders but still, public sentiment--
PLAIDDER: Can we wrap up the summary? Ethir?
ETHIR: Well you know damn well we never got to deliberations. They saw what I was doing and they knew how it was going and they knew they were losing public support. Iâd been thinking all along, either they convict and thereâs a rebellion, or they acquit because they donât want that. And they came up with a third option that had never occurred to me.
PLAIDDER: Which was to stage Slytheâs suicide.
ETHIR: Why did you kill her? WHY?
PLAIDDER: Iâm sorry, Ethir--
ETHIR: And not even for dramatic effect. Sheâs just a--a footnote--
PLAIDDER: No. Thatâs not fair. We donât see her death but we feel it. It was a war, Ethir. Someone had to die. And given that you fall in love with every shriia you meet, it was probably going to have to be someone you cared about. Iâm sorry it hurt you. But our viewers are wondering what the takeaway is--
ETHIR: Well Iâll give you the thurking takeaway: everyone on your side is so excited about how well the House managers are doing and theyâre all thinking what Theamh told me before that trial at Mypril--
PLAIDDER: Which was:Â âUnder these conditions they could convict a bowl of soup. Even if the bowl of soup had a really good lawyer.â
ETHIR: No, the other part.
PLAIDDER: OK:Â âI donât need you to get me off. I need you to make sure that WHEN they convict me, everyone watching knows Iâm innocent.â
ETHIR: Right. Win in the court of public opinion. Well you know what happens when the process is rigged, the jury is corrupt, the government is in the grip of evil, and youâre winning in the court of opinion?Â
PLAIDDER: Well--
ETHIR: THEY KILL YOUR CLIENT.
PLAIDDER: Not necess--
ETHIR: When they canât afford to win OR to lose, they just kill their opponents.
PLAIDDER: All right, but...that only happened once.
ETHIR: If that trial at Mypril hadnât been broken up, it would have happened twice. I only agreed to represent Theamh because I was in contact with Istria. I went in there knowing I wasnât going to let that trial finish. I took their tarbhfnaa and I pulled it on THEM.Â
PLAIDDER: But in this case...the client is American democracy. Doesnât that change things? They canât just...kill it.
ETHIR: They will do their level best.
PLAIDDER: Right about now Conn would normally--
ETHIR: Yeah, heâs not here. I loved the law. I loved it with a passionate love. I watched them corrupt it. I had to live without the rule of law while still being a lawyer. And I am--to use a phrase weâre all picking up from the locals--not OK.
PLAIDDER: At least I kept you out of Redemption.
ETHIR: At least in Redemption it wouldnât have been my own country doing this to me.
PLAIDDER: You look like I feel, I guess.
ETHIR: I suppose I do.Â
PLAIDDER: I guess I have to be the one hoping for better things.
ETHIR: Hope away.Â
PLAIDDER: I donât know how many episodes of this show weâre gonna do. But if we do, I guess Iâll see you next time.
So we have started watching Once Upon a Time and are midway through Season 2. PJ is very into it. Itâs a bit weird for me for a specific reason: Because OUAT and WOF both use a lot of fairy tale/fantasy tropes, some things that I think of as very specifically WOF things show up sort of prominently in OUAT and...thatâs weird. So when I watch it, I canât help thinking about how this show would play with the WOF crowd. Behind the cut tag, some of them will be discussing their reactions. Itâll involve spoilers for seasons 1-2 of OUAT and basically all of WOF.
PLAIDDER: All right, so, for the sake of any readers who may remember this show well enough to care where we are with it, weâre about midway through Season 2. Emma and Snow have returned from the Bad Place, and Cora has followed them and has just faked Regina killing Archie, causing Emma et al. to turn on the partially-redeemed Regina, while actually keeping Archie captive on Hookâs invisible pirate ship. OK?
AINE: I suppose WOFâs plot would also sound pretty stupid if you had to summarize it in one paragraph.Â
THEAMH: I donât think it would sound THAT stupid.
PLAIDDER: ANYWAY! I just wanted to get your reactions to some of the...you know...correspondences.
THEAMH: Oh, you mean the whole reuniting the separated lovers thing? You know, âWe will always find each other!â
ISTRIA:Â âBut will we always lose each other? Is that our fate?â
PLAIDDER: To be honest I do kind of think that given that the show runs for seven seasons, it pretty much is gonna be their fate. The whole âwaking the pseudo-dead beloved with true loveâs kissâ has already been done so many damn times and yet I fear it will happen with increasing frequency as we--
THEAMH: Iâm sorry, you do not have a leg to stand on there. Istri, how many times have we--
ISTRIA: So letâs see...you lose me, you find me, you get taken prisoner, I find you. Thatâs all just up to Greenhaven. Then you get arrested by those traitors at Lythrilâs old castle--
THEAMH: You lose me--
ISTRIA: Trial at Mypril--
THEAMH: You find me. Giant arani fight at Amranth--
ISTRIA: You lose me, you find me.Â
THEAMH: I think thatâs the last time. So thatâs...
ISTRIA: No, no, weâre forgetting about âHomeswept.â
THEAMH: Oh FNAA. Idairâs HAIRPINS. Well I mean can you blame me?
ISTRIA: I cannot.
THEAMH: Yes. You lose me, I lose you, we manage to more or less find each other--
PLAIDDER: All right. Yes. I am a sucker for a good reunion. I mean as much as I bitch about it I actually sort of can watch that story line a fair few times before I get tired of it. Itâs nice how reciprocal it is with Charming and Snow.Â
THEAMH: Yes, that IS nice. Can I just ask though...why do all the men look the same?
ISTRIA: They donât all look the same. There are two kinds. The blonde kind is a prince and the dark-haired kind is a dark userâs familiar.
PLAIDDER: Yes, I will say they made the Maerin figure a lot more interesting on OUAT. I actually kind of like both of them, which is strange, because I fucking HATE Maerin.
LYTHRIL: So do I.
PLAIDDER: Yes. Well, Lythril, since youâre here--
LYTHRIL: The reason you can...attach yourself...to Graham and Hook is that their dark users havenât properly broken them. The bond is in the playful stage, where both partners are capable of enjoying each other.Â
PLAIDDER: And...did you and Maerin have...a playful stage?
LYTHRIL: Of course.
PLAIDDER: Iâm really glad I didnât have to write that.
LYTHRIL: It was brief.
PLAIDDER: Well, as long as youâre here...I mean whatâs it like for you watching Regina?Â
THEAMH: Are you sure these people havenât been reading your--
PLAIDDER: Yes, Iâm sure. Iâm very sure. Look, I saw Snow White just like everyone else and the evil Queen freaked me out just like everyone else and Lythril does kind of have the evil Queenâs vibe and thatâs the transmission pattern. The film Snow White is the common source. WOF and OUAT arenât borrowing from each other. I never watched the show while I was writing WOF, and I am 100% certain that nobody on the WOF distribution list ended up writing for a nighttime drama on ABC.
AINE: How can you be sure?
PLAIDDER: Look, I asked Lythril a question--
LYTHRIL: And because it will amuse me, Iâm going to answer it: I find watching Regina EXTREMELY frustrating.Â
PLAIDDER: Why?
LYTHRIL: Itâs a very long list.Â
PLAIDDER: Could we have the condensed version?
LYTHRIL: She doesnât have the commitment. She doesnât love the work. She doesnât LIKE being evil. Â
PLAIDDER: Oh, I think she does like it.
LYTHRIL: No. It looks that way at first, but then they give her this...
PLAIDDER: Backstory.
LYTHRIL: That simpering little girl with her stableboy lover--that was PAINFUL. There is NO way that girl grows up to be the most powerful dark user in the kingdom.Â
TARIC: If I could--
PLAIDDER: Yes, of course, Taric.
TARIC: I donât think I realized before that I was a...trope?
PLAIDDER: Yes, I did try to keep that from you. Iâm sorry--
TARIC: Is that why Iâm...you know...simple?
KEANRIH: Oh Taric. Youâre not simple. Youâre very complex.Â
TARIC: No, I mean...not very smart, and not good with words, and generally...not really very interesting.
KEANRIH: Donât SAY those things about yourself!
PLAIDDER: All right, look, there is this whole thing with girls and horses and even though I never had a horse I did sort of become fascinated with horses for a while and yes, you two were a trope, but so are Theamh and Istria. I mean there were people back in the day who categorized WOF as a Xena a/u.Â
AINE: WHAT?!
THEAMH: Aine, just calm--
AINE: THERE IS NO SUBTEXT. THERE WAS NEVER ANY SUBTEXT. WE DISCUSSED THIS EXPLICITLY--
PLAIDDER: Aine, you cannot do anything about what people do with your story. You write, they read, what happens next is up to the gods. My point is: yes, Taric, you are a cheesy romance trope, I am very sorry, but I did do my best to give you the same kind of character depth that I gave everyone else, which is something that definitely DOES NOT happen with Daniel. So you are both the same trope but Daniel is a lot more...trope-y...than you are.
KEANRIH: Also I would never have turned you into a zombie.
TARIC: Thank you.
PLAIDDER: Look, speaking of zombies staggering around heartless, can we get back to Lythrilâs take on--
LYTHRIL: Despite all the other fnaa youâve pulled on me I feel almost moved to thank you for never giving me a backstory...if THIS is what it looks like.
PLAIDDER: Well...to some extent it inevitably does, because nobodyâs just born evil.Â
LYTHRIL: No, but not everyone has evil thrust upon them. Some of us chose it.
PLAIDDER: Well, Rumplestiltskin--
LYTHRIL: Do not SPEAK TO ME about that BLASPHEMY.
PLAIDDER: Well I donât think they mean the same thing that you mean when they say âDark Oneâ--
AINE: Are you SURE they havenât read your books?
PLAIDDER: YES I AM SURE!
LYTHRIL: She wants to be redeemed? She wants to be a better mother? WHY? Why does she want to be a mother at all? I didnât want that for a steaming hot second.
PLAIDDER:Â Oh, you are obsessed with fertility. OBSESSED.
LYTHRIL: Dark magic and maternity are profoundly incompatible.
RENNA: My gleacha they are.
LYTHRIL: Your entire *existence* proves my point. Take Regina out of the Enchanted Forest and she turns into YOU. An idiot who would choose some child over magic and power. I hate Storybrooke Regina. Always weak, and incompetent, and--
RENNA: I was strong enough to kill YOU.
LYTHRIL: You had help.
PLAIDDER: I actually donât hate Storybrooke Reginaâs redemption arc. I mean I donât know how itâs going to end, but--
ISTRIA: You call that a redemption arc?
PLAIDDER: Oh dear.Â
ISTRIA: She doesnât understand the FIRST DAMN THING about redemption.Â
THEAMH: She yells at the screen a LOT when Reginaâs on it.
ISTRIA: Youâre all hurt when people donât want to invite you to their parties. Of course they donât! You ruined all of their lives! And except *sometimes* regarding Henry, you have done NOTHING to live it down!
THEAMH: Like that.
ISTRIA: Redemption is not about getting people to like you. Itâs about taking responsibility for the harm youâve done and trying to undo it. Whether people *like* you again is irrelevant. Itâs not about you and what you want any more, thatâs the point.
PLAIDDER: Listen, this cannot go on forever, and I donât want to quit without talking about the hearts thing.
LYTHRIL: Yes. The hearts thing.
AINE: I just donât see how you can be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that nobody who writes for that show has--
PLAIDDER: For the love of Pete, Aine, in the story of Snow White the evil Queen says she wants the huntsman to rip out Snow Whiteâs heart and liver and bring them back to her and that is where ALL of these chest-punching heart-ripping evil women in black came from.
LYTHRIL: Itâs HILARIOUS. Nobody needs THAT many hearts.
PLAIDDER: Well I think she uses these hearts for different purposes than--
LYTHRIL: Every time I watch her or Cora do that I have to pause it because Iâm laughing so hard. Whereâs the blood? Where are the screams? Where are the broken ribs and the--
THEAMH: Could you not--
LYTHRIL: And this glowing red Lucite thing that comes out--
ISTRIA: I know!
LYTHRIL: Thatâs not a heart. I donât know what that is but itâs not...hearts are bloody, theyâre warm, they pulse, theyâre--
THEAMH: Theyâre messy. Really, really--
LYTHRIL: Thatâs the whole POINT of a heart, thatâs why people miss them in the first place. Â
THEAMH: Yeah, theyâre like...thatâs where the whole soul/body thing happens, at least if youâre heart seated, and it matters that itâs all squishy and misshapen and--
LYTHRIL: Theyâre flesh. Hearts are flesh. Theyâre meat. Thatâs the point of hearts.
THEAMH: ExACTly!
[high-five begins]
ISTRIA: HEY! Are you both INSANE?
[high-five aborted]
PLAIDDER: Can I at least get your thoughts on Reginaâs fashion sense?
[Everybody laughs]
AINE: Who is MAKING all those gowns for her? Who is doing her hair? Where does she get the materials?
PLAIDDER: And why does she lead with her cleavage, even in battle?
LYTHRIL: Oh come on. I have seen your illustrations.
PLAIDDER: What? Theyâre nothing like--
LYTHRIL: Shriias, back me up here: does she or does she not have me doing everything tits out?
THEAMH: I do have to admit--
PLAIDDER: No! Your outfits are--
LYTHRIL: Very tight.Â
PLAIDDER: Well sure but--
THEAMH: At least sheâs never drawn you naked.
PLAIDDER: LOOK.
LYTHRIL: I donât mind. Sincerely, I do not mind being the sexiest woman in this universe--
[confused and vehement shouts of protest from all assembled]
PLAIDDER: All right all RIGHT! There will be NO MORE discussion of costuming! Or hearts! Or competitive sexiness!
CHANDRA: Are we not even going to TALK about Mulan?
PLAIDDER: And another country is heard from.
CHANDRA: You know I heard there was going to be queer-baiting in this show and all through season one I was like, where is it? All the men seem very very straight to me.And then Mulan and Aurora show up and itâs like, oh, I see it now.
PLAIDDER: Yes. Well...
CHANDRA:Â âI promised Prince Phillip I would protect you and I will fight both of these other hot women to do it!â
PLAIDDER: All right, point--
CHANDRA: Mulan literally holds Auroraâs heart in her hands and actually PUTS IT BACK IN HER CHEST--
PLAIDDER: Sure--
CHANDRA: I mean even those two over there never got THAT close. And then the NEXT THURKING LINE:Â âLetâs go see if we can bring my useless dead boyfriend back to life!â
PLAIDDER: I did notice--
CHANDRA:Â Youâve got this intense, smoldering woman in armor staring at you with love beaming out of her eyes and--I mean if youâve got Mulan, WHO NEEDS PHILIP?
PLAIDDER: You know, some women ARE straight, and--
CHANDRA: Everyone ELSE gets to bring their true love back with a kiss but Mulan and Aurora have to do it through open heart surgery?
PLAIDDER: OK, but the coding makes it more intense and more interesting. Admit it.
THEAMH: You didnât code us.
KEANRIH: Or us.
PLAIDDER: Yeah, well your story was never published, was it?
AINE: You regret that?
PLAIDDER: No. I really donât. I honestly donât know what would have become of all of you if Iâd had to really try to make you marketable.
CHANDRA: But that was the 1990s. This was freaking 2011.
PLAIDDER: All right, this has gone on long enough. Are we going to finish Season 2 or not?
LYTHRIL: I think your spawn has doomed us to it.
PLAIDDER: Well...are you enjoying any of this?
LYTHRIL: I enjoy imagining ways to kill Cora.
PLAIDDER: You know, Lythril, we never found out what your mother was like.
LYTHRIL: Thank the Dark One for that.
PLAIDDER: Or if youâd ever been in love, before...
LYTHRIL: Never.
PLAIDDER: You sure about that?
LYTHRIL: NEVER.
PLAIDDER: Because something did go on with you and Ulnach at scoil, and I go back and forth on what exactly it was, but I will tell you, sometimes in my mind it looks a lot like a Cinderella AU.
LYTHRIL: Youâre not going to actually write that, are you?
PLAIDDER: Probably not. See, this is kind of interesting to me as an idea, but if I actually committed to it, I think I would--
LYTHRIL: Because that would be a GREAT way to lose a heart.
PLAIDDER: Well look. We complain, but weâre all having fun here, right? I mean youâre enjoying getting together and making fun of your...counterparts?
ISTRIA: I will admit, it is sort of fun.
THEAMH: Itâs better than talking about American politics.
PLAIDDER: All right, letâs wrap this up before Conn shows up. Thanks everyone; Iâll see you at the end of season 2, maybe.
This Fcking Impeachment, Episode 5: If You Go After The King
PLAIDDER: Hey, Conn.
CONN: Hello, stranger.
PLAIDDER: Leave me alone. Iâve been busy.
CONN: Youâve been hiding.
PLAIDDER: OK, fine. Iâve been taking a break from all...this. I donât think Iâve really missed anything.Â
CONN: How can you say--
PLAIDDER: For the first week, you know, I thought it actually would matter how things went in the impeachment hearings. And maybe it did, some. But not enough.
CONN: You were waiting for your Republicans to turn on him, werenât you.
PLAIDDER: No. But I thought public opinion might shift, or something. Now, itâs just...you know, I donât expect a lot of surprises at this point. The House will impeach and the Senate will acquit and the Russians will collude and this son of a bitch will be reelected in 2020 and thatâs the end of the American experiment.
CONN: Please donât tell me you regret your Nancy Pelosiâs doing this.
PLAIDDER: Oh no. No, not at all. We had to.
CONN: Thatâs a relief.
PLAIDDER: You know, they say, if you go after the king, you better not miss. But you understand better than most that sometimes--
CONN: Sometimes, you just have to go after the king.Â
PLAIDDER: No matter what.
CONN: No matter what.
PLAIDDER: What actually depresses me most about all this, Conn, is watching everyone second-guess what the Democrats are doing. Everyone wants to be the one to have found the flaw in the strategy that will have led to the final defeat. This is what frustrates me about the mainstream media--the âgoodâ media, the ones that actually try to be factually accurate and halfway responsible. Thereâs always this narrative, where for a while one side is up, and then that side is down and the other side is up, and so no matter whatâs actually happening, you think youâre winning one week and the next week youâre plunged into despair.
CONN: Our repeater chains really arenât that sophisticated.
PLAIDDER: I didnât want them to be. Your countryâs never going to have social media; you already have telepathy.
CONN: So this week, the story is the Democrats are down, eh?Â
PLAIDDER: Yeah. Knowing that this is the narrative somehow doesnât protect me from it emotionally. But all week itâs been âwhat the Democrats should do that theyâre not doingâ or âwhat the Democrats shouldnât do that they are doingâ or âwhy the whole process is broken and our country is fucked up beyond all repairâ or...and Iâm sick of it.Â
CONN: Do you really think they could be doing a better job with this?
PLAIDDER: No. I donât. This is what drives me nuts. When Pelosi was staving off impeachment, everyone I knew was like, what is this weak sauce, what are they waiting for, he gives proof of impeachability every day, this is what we always do, we keep our powder dry till itâs too late to use it, this party will never do anything right as long as theyâre taking money from corporations, etc. etc. etc. Now weâre actually doing it, and everyone wants to talk about why itâs not working.Â
CONN: How is it not working? All the evidence--
PLAIDDER: I know. I know. They have no evidence, they have no logical or coherent defense of him, they have nothing, everything during the Intelligence Committee hearings went our way. But to the people who support him, it doesnât matter what the evidence shows. It doesnât matter what the law is. It doesnât matter what the Constitution says. If he does it, itâs right.Â
CONN: And you donât understand that.
PLAIDDER: I have never felt that way about any politician. When it comes to politics, I donât fall in love.
CONN: Not even with your Mr. Obama?
PLAIDDER: Look, Iâm not gonna say I was immune to his magic, or Bill Clintonâs either. But when Bill Clinton was accused of having an affair with a White House intern, I was like, well thatâs not implausible. I hoped he was telling us the truth about that, but I was ultimately not really surprised to discover that he wasnât. Obama promised to close Guantanamo and he didnât. Obama deported all kinds of people. Obama was fine with undeclared drone warfare. Nobodyâs perfect. Nobodyâs ideal. Nobodyâs a hero.
CONN: None of that stops you from wanting them to be. Thatâs why you get mad at them, when they inevitably betray your hopes.
PLAIDDER: My point is, Conn, Buttercup came into this presidency with about 35-40% approval and thatâs where heâll be when he finally leaves it, no matter what happens. And 35-40% approval is good enough to keep the Congressional Republicans fawning around him licking his boots. Itâs disgusting. Itâs depressing.
CONN: Well then why did you want this impeachment, if it doesnât matter?
PLAIDDER: You can be a real pain in the gleacha, you know that?
CONN: Maybe, but Iâm cheaper than your therapist.
PLAIDDER: Yeah, all right. We had to do it. Because you have to do what you CAN do, even if it doesnât matter. Before you get to the...scary shit...you have to exhaust the constitutional remedies.
CONN: Exactly.
PLAIDDER: If we hadnât done this, weâd always have told ourselves that was our mistake. Now weâre doing it, and whatever happens, at least we donât have to beat ourselves up for not having been willing to take the risk.
CONN: And may I remind you that you donât know whatâll happen.
PLAIDDER: I think I do, Conn.
CONN: You didnât predict how the shutdown would end.Â
PLAIDDER: Yeah, you were closer but you were wrong. They didnât vote to override his veto.
CONN: Because he realized it was a danger and decided not to give them the choice. If he comes to think thereâs a real chance he will be removed, heâll run. Heâs not a brave man.
PLAIDDER: But there is no real chance of his being removed-
CONN: --yet.
PLAIDDER: NO! NO MORE YETS! I AM SICK OF YET! THERE ARE NO YETS IN THIS COUNTRY! WE ARE YETLESS! AMERICA HAS A MASSIVE YET DEFICIT!
CONN: Friend, I can see youâre upset, but let me tell you: you donât know. Nobody knows. People have opinions but they donât know. Did anyone know that your Mr. Giuliani was going to go to Ukraine this week to continue soliciting bribes and propagating Russian disinformation while the hearings were going on?
PLAIDDER: NOBODY CARES!
CONN: Your Rep. Matt Gaetz, he of the Great SCIF Sit-In, is on record saying that itâs âweird.â
PLAIDDER: So what. Buttercup will tweet at him and heâll walk it back.
CONN: But did you expect that?
PLAIDDER: No. No, to be honest, I did not expect that.
CONN: Your Senator Kennedy canât seem to decide whether heâs all in on the propaganda or not. He keeps going back and forth.Â
PLAIDDER: What does that get us?
CONN: Nothing tangible. The report on that investigation your William Barr started into the Mueller investigation is due to be released today. Have you read it?
PLAIDDER: No, they havenât dropped it yet.Â
CONN: Why not?
PLAIDDER: I donât know, maybe they got held up at Kinkoâs.
CONN: You donât think it might be because theyâre desperately trying to massage it into a vindication of Trumpâs âhoaxâ narrative even though they know they canât?
PLAIDDER: Of course it might be. Or it may be theyâre planning to dump it at 5 after the impeachment hearings are over.
CONN: If itâs going to vindicate their man, wouldnât they drop it now and pull focus?
PLAIDDER: Conn--
CONN: YOU MADE ME RESILIENT. You MADE ME an optimist. YOU made me capable of preserving my faith in democratic institutions and diplomacy through EVERYTHING. Through imprisonment and mindforcing and torture. Maybe I SHOULD stop hoping but I canât because you made hope unkillable in me. Why are you yelling at me? I am who I am because you need me to be that way.
PLAIDDER: I know. I know.
CONN: And I say, do not throw yourself into a pit of despair just because he has not been defeated YET.
PLAIDDER: All right, Conn. Point taken.Â
CONN: Theyâre doing what you want them to do and what you know is right. Theyâre going after the king. No matter what.
PLAIDDER: No matter what.
CONN: The consequences will be what they will be. But this was the right thing to do and theyâre doing it. Canât you celebrate that?
PLAIDDER: I guess I can try.
CONN: Thatâs the spirit!
PLAIDDER: All right, Conn, thanks for coming in. See you next episode.
Iâd just like everyone to know that Mrs. P and I are involved in an ongoing dispute about something that happens at the end of Redemption and which is obviously a spoiler so further discussion goes behind a cut tag.
Mrs. P refuses to believe that Lythril really dies at the end of Redemption. It usually goes about like this:
ME: Lythril dies at the end of Redemption. She is dead. DEAD. Aine ended her.
MRS. P: No way.
ME: In the first draft everyone had the same reaction so I went back and inserted a paragraph specially designed to explain why and how once Aine casts her specter out of the Redemptrix, Lythril is in fact absolutely and totally dead.
MRS. P: Come on. Itâs Lythril. She canât die.
ME: Lythril is not immortal.
MRS. P: But sheâs the strongest and smartest and most powerful dark user ever!
ME: Aine casts her and sheâs gone.
MRS. P: Lythril found someone else to possess and sheâll be back.
ME: Sheâs not coming back. Sheâs dead.
MRS. P: I could see how maybe she would wind up in some kind of Voldemort-type situation where sheâd need some kind of new body to return--
ME: IN MY MIND, LYTHRIL IS DEAD. I WROTE THESE BOOKS.Â
MRS. P: Come on though. Sheâs still alive.
ME: Look, believe what you want to believe, but my intention is for her to be DEAD.
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This Fcking Impeachment: Episode 4, Irregular Channels
PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to the least influential of the Sunday morning talk shows! With me in the studio today is imaginary talking head Conn mac Emer. Conn, welcome back to the show.
CONN: About thurking time.Â
PLAIDDER: Iâve been busy, and also despairing over the fate of the republic.
CONN: Thereâs so much thatâs happened since the last episode, I donât even know where to start.Â
PLAIDDER: Well donât start with Yovanovitch, I already ran a piece on her.
CONN: Yes. I saw. Your president and all his lackeys are all lucky that I am imaginary.
PLAIDDER: I know. And now theyâre all, well, her testimony was irrelevant because she didnât actually witness any of the--
CONN: Well, of course she didnât. They got rid of her precisely so that she wouldnât. Anyway, she has the same story to tell that al of the other men are telling, itâs just a different phase.
PLAIDDER: And what story is that?
CONN: The story of the irregular channel.
PLAIDDER: Ah. Yes. You remember how Buttercup tweeted about his âabsolute rightâ to appoint whatever ambassadors he wants, and then Yovanovitch said, sure, but why didnât he just recall me then instead of letting these jackasses smear me for a year and a half? Iâm paraphrasing, of course.
CONN: I do remember.
PLAIDDER: My guess is that you have an answer to this question.Â
CONN: Indeed I thurking do.
PLAIDDER: So I think some of our readers might like to know, before we get into this, that while you were serving as the Ideiren ambassador to the Nation, someone in your embassy decided to create an âirregular channel.â
CONN: Isnât that a spoiler?
PLAIDDER: We donât have to get into the details. Let me just ask: in your experience, why do people open up âirregular channelsâ? If youâre a head of state, and you already have an ambassador whose job it is to advance foreign policy in that country, why would you open an âirregular channelâ between yourself and that countryâs leader?
CONN: There are two possible reasons you might do that. One is risky but, for better or worse, a fairly common diplomatic tactic. The other is corrupt.
PLAIDDER: Letâs take the first reason first.
CONN: There are certain goals that you, the head of state, might wish to accomplish, but which would be difficult to do through official channels. So for instance, during the IRA hunger strike in 1980-81, there were negotiations to try to resolve it going on between the British parliament and the IRA, through a back channel created by MI-6. Â
PLAIDDER: Why through a back channel?
CONN: For the same reason this kind of thing is usually done through a back channel. The government in question wants to be able to say, âWe donât negotiate with terrorists.â So when--as it must--that government DOES negotiate with the terrorists, it has to be done in such a way that the head of state and the party in power can deny knowledge of it. In fact the IRA negotiator was told that if the governmentâs offer to the strikers was ever leaked to the media, they would deny any knowledge of it.Â
PLAIDDER: And at around the same time, Jimmy Carterâs government was negotiating for the release of the hostages in Iran--
CONN: --also, initially, through a back channel.Â
PLAIDDER: Why do governments negotiate with terrorists?
CONN: Because you canât resolve a conflict without negotiation.Â
PLAIDDER: I think you CAN--
CONN: You can if you donât mind killing people.
PLAIDDER: All right.
CONN: My point is: with a lot of acute crises like that thereâs a public-facing policy and a private policy. But theyâre working *together,* is my point. Everyone has the same goals and everyoneâs doing their part to get to the same outcome. The final stages of the Iranian hostage negotiations were done through normal State Department channels. Everyone involved knew what was going on and they were all working together.
PLAIDDER: As opposed to this Ukraine situation--
CONN: Where Yovanovitch was kept in the dark about everything Giuliani and his friends were doing until some of the Ukrainian officials she worked with told her about it.Â
PLAIDDER: OK. So that brings us to the second reason you would create a back channel.Â
CONN: The second reason to create a back channel is that you want to do something corrupt or criminal and you donât want anyone apart from your accomplices to know about it.
PLAIDDER: Can you just talk about what âsomething corruptâ means? I fear an increasing number of Americans are unclear on the concept.
CONN: All right. So. One reason this is confusing is the perception people have, which is not totally wrong, that all politicians are ultimately motivated by self-interest. And many of them are; but thereâs a difference between ambition and corruption. Itâs one thing to take a course of action because you think it will benefit, or at least please, the people who voted for you, or people who might later vote for you. Itâs quite another thing to do something purely because it will benefit you.Â
Itâs easier to see the difference when thereâs money involved. If youâre a head of state and youâre taking peopleâs tax money out of the treasury and buying yourself palaces with it, people can tell thatâs corrupt.Â
PLAIDDER: One would like to hope.
CONN: Well, in this case, your president was using peopleâs tax money to try to buy himself another four years in office. Thatâs just as corrupt as just stealing that money and putting it in the bank.
PLAIDDER: Because it only benefits him.
CONN: Exactly.
PLAIDDER: And hurts the country heâs supposed to be working for.
CONN: Right.
PLAIDDER: So how does this answer the question of why they had to smear Marie Yovanovitch instead of just recalling her?
CONN: Well, first of all, Yovanovitch is obviously not going to get involved in something like this. Leaving aside questions of personal integrity, she is experienced enough and smart enough to know that the whole thing will blow up in the faces of anyone involved.Â
PLAIDDER: Right. So they have to get rid of her. But why doesnât Buttercup just recall her, in that case, and put in someone else?
CONN: Youâre assuming that this whole mess was masterminded by a single person. A single intelligent person.
PLAIDDER: Yes. I am. Always a mistake with this crew, but I keep making it.
CONN: Your president wasnât just gratifying his own corrupt desires here. He was also being played by Ukranians who wanted to gratify their own corrupt desires and used him to do it; and also by--
PLAIDDER: Vladimir Putin.
CONN: Perhaps not directly or personally, but yes. The smear campaign against Yovanovitch not only removes her from that post, it ensures sheâll never have a high-level post in this administration again. Thatâs what Lutsenko and his corrupt friends want. It also means thereâs no American ambassador to Ukraine--because ambassadors have to be confirmed by the Senate, and support for Ukraine is one of the few things both parties can agree on, and they would want to make sure whoever went into that post was actually good at their job. That benefits Vladimir Putin.
PLAIDDER: The same way another four years of Buttercup destroying America would also benefit Putin.
CONN: Right. The same way that the overall destruction of your State Department benefits Putin.Â
PLAIDDER: And the smear campaign also contributes to that.
CONN: Yes. It will mean fewer people like Yovanovitch are willing to work for this administration under any circumstances--because now they know that this could happen to any of them.Â
PLAIDDER: So Buttercup has these two things that he wants. But a lot is going on here thatâs much more about what Putin wants or what Yovanovitchâs Ukrainian enemies want or what Giulianiâs two goons want.
CONN: Exactly. Your president thinks he set up this back channel to get what he wants. But in fact heâs just being played by other, smarter people trying to get what they want. And thatâs why they want to keep him in that job. So they can keep using him to advance their own agendas.
PLAIDDER: No puppet, no puppet, youâre the puppet.
CONN: What?
PLAIDDER: Never mind.Â
CONN: No, really, what are you talking about?
PLAIDDER: Back in the old days, we used to call a country that was nominally politically autonomous but in fact actually controlled by the Soviet Union a puppet regime. Buttercupâs presidency is turning the US into Russiaâs puppet regime. You really cannot imagine how that feels to someone who remembers the 1980s. But anyway. You were explaining how Buttercup abusing his power for personal gain isnât the only or even the worst thing thatâs happening here.
CONN: No. Because heâs also creating more opportunities for other corrupt people to get what they want. Thatâs the thing with an irregular channel. Youâre basically creating an infrastructure for corruption. Once youâve built it, anyone can travel through it.
PLAIDDER: Ironically, after eleventy hundred Infrastructure Weeks, this back channel is the one highway heâs actually built.
CONN: Can you answer one of my questions now?
PLAIDDER: Iâll try.
CONN: Who is Kim Kardashian?
PLAIDDER: Oh my God.Â
CONN: Is she a head of state?
PLAIDDER: NO! No, my God, she is not a head of state.
CONN: So why was Ambassador Sondland discussing her with your president on that phone call from Kyiv?
PLAIDDER: Just to get this straight for our viewers...you are asking me why, when Gordon Sondland called the President of the United States on an UNSECURED CELL PHONE in a RESTAURANT in Ukraine to tell him how Zelensky had agreed to give him everything he wanted during a meeting where career diplomats were NOT ALLOWED to attend or take notes and that Zelensky âloves [Buttercupâs] assâ and will do anything Buttercup wants--why, after Buttercup talked to Sondland about this SO LOUDLY THAT HE COULD BE OVERHEARD BY PEOPLE AT THE TABLE, which letâs remember is a table in a crowded RESTAURANT, they then went on to discuss the matter of A$AP Rockyâs arrest in Sweden on assault charges with an equal amount of urgency and discretion?
CONN: Well apparently it has something to do with Kim Kardashian.Â
PLAIDDER: You are referring to this passage:Â âDuring the course of the phone call from the restaurant, Sondland also consulted with Trump on another matter of importance to the president at the time: efforts to free the American rapper A$AP Rocky from jail in Sweden at the request of reality television star Kim Kardashian.â
CONN: I am.
PLAIDDER: I am sorry to have to tell you, Conn, that Kim Kardashian is the star of a TV show entitled Keeping Up With the Kardashians.Â
CONN: Is...is it a news program?
PLAIDDER: NO IT IS NOT A NEWS PROGRAM!
CONN: So sheâs...not a journalist.
PLAIDDER: No! Sheâs a celebrity!
CONN: Whatâs she famous for?
PLAIDDER: For being famous!
CONN: I donât understand.
PLAIDDER: NEITHER DO I!Â
CONN: Isnât there something she must have done at some point to become--
PLAIDDER: Yes, there was, but honestly Conn, I donât want to talk about it. You have been through enough and so have I.
CONN: But what has she got to do with American foreign policy?
PLAIDDER: NOTHING! Donât you understand? This is what we are dealing with here. We are dealing with a man who 'readsâ Kim Kardashianâs Instagram but canât sit through the presidential daily briefing. We have elected as President of the United States someone who is more concerned about whether Kim Kardashian thinks heâs done enough for A$AP Rocky than he is about whether Ukraine will be annexed by Russia. I mean I donât think you can really fully appreciate this, Conn, because nobody in either Ideire OR the Nation is LIKE THIS.
CONN: Not even the Chowderhead?
PLAIDDER: NOT EVEN HIM.
CONN: Wow.
PLAIDDER: OK, weâre just going to end this here, I think. If I think about the whole Ukraine/Kardashian juxtaposition for one more second I will literally explode. Tune in next week, Iâm sure there will be plenty more developments.Â
This Fcking Impeachment: Episode 3, Ambassados and Ambassadonâts
PLAIDDER: Good morning and welcome to the most imaginary of the Sunday morning talk shows, This Fcking Impeachment! With me in the studio is...uh...
CONN: Iâm sorry, I meant to tidy up before you arrived, but I got sidetracked by the--
PLAIDDER: Conn...since our last episode...have you been...living here?
CONN: I cannot deny it.
PLAIDDER: Conn--
CONN: Thereâs been fnaa going down EVERY DAY! I just wanted to be READY!
PLAIDDER: Well, Iâm sorry itâs taken me so long to get back to the studio, thereâs a lot going on out there and I find all of this exhausting. But I did want to...
CONN: Itâs all right to light candles in here, isnât it? I mean, the whole place is imaginary...
PLAIDDER: Is that...have you built a shrine to former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch?
CONN: I might have.
PLAIDDER: Conn...youâre taking this all very seriously. I think maybe you need a break. Look, Mrs. P is reading Redemption again, why donât you just go back to your embassy and hang out in the earlier chapters for a while?
CONN: Oh, sure. Iâll just go back to my cozy little embassy and my ugly yellow sweaters and my tea and my friendly banter with Spindern, shall I?
PLAIDDER: I guess...I mean I guess this version of you canât forget...
CONN: No, I cannot. And so...I mean it was bad enough for me dealing with a shadow foreign policy being promulgated in secret by my one subordinate. This poor Marie ni hOabhanobhaitch was being suborned from above and around as well as below. You canât fire someone who doesnât work for you.Â
PLAIDDER: Especially when you donât actually know what theyâre doing.
CONN: It makes my blood boil. Being an ambassador is thurking hard.Â
PLAIDDER: I know. I mean, I honestly think that for the duration of Redemption you were the hardest working man on the island.Â
CONN: Since nobody works harder than Aine.
PLAIDDER: Indeed not. I want you to know Iâm even more proud of you now than I was before, now that Iâm watching this mess unfold. You were a really good ambassador.
CONN: Since you say it.
PLAIDDER: You WERE. Itâs true you did some things that werenât, strictly speaking, entirely above board or explicitly authorized...
CONN: Thatâs part of the job. Thatâs why they have a human doing this job instead of just negotiating everything via email. Youâre there, youâre on the ground, you know more than your superiors do. I knew what the Seatâs goals were when they sent me, and I worked to accomplish them. And I didnât tell them 100% of how I was doing that, because it wouldnât have helped anyone for them to know. Thereâs always stuff that happens in back rooms, off the record. Thatâs not whatâs horrifying about all this.
PLAIDDER: So speaking as an ambassador who was not corrupt, could you explain for our non-ambassador readers some of these ambassa-dos and ambassa-donâts?
CONN: All right: first of all, DO have a clear idea of what your diplomatic mission is and what your goals are. And then DONâT do things that will undermine those goals.
PLAIDDER: So, for instance, Marie Yovanovitchâs diplomatic mission...
CONN: Well, hereâs what it says on the website of the US Embassy in Ukraine:
âThe United States established diplomatic relations with Ukraine in 1991, following its independence from the Soviet Union. The United States attaches great importance to the success of Ukraineâs transition to a modern democratic state with a flourishing market economy. U.S. policy is centered on realizing and strengthening a democratic, prosperous, and secure Ukraine more closely integrated into Europe and Euro-Atlantic structures.â
Put in slightly less...
PLAIDDER: Diplomatic?
CONN:...obscure language, the goal of the official diplomatic mission to the Ukraine was to stop Russia from taking the place over and thus rebuilding the former Soviet empire under new management. To keep Ukraine an ally of the US instead of a Russian puppet. Basic geopolitics. I mean you could argue about the wisdom of all that but thatâs Congressâs job. As the ambassador, itâs not your job to set the goals; itâs your job to pursue them.Â
PLAIDDER: Right.Â
CONN: But hereâs the thing. Marie Yovanovitch was carrying out the official mission. Nobody told her that there was a completely different unofficial mission to Ukraine being led by your Mr. Giuliani. That information was shared, evidently, only with this Kurt Volker and this Bill Taylor and this Gordon Sundland. And if you look at this group of shadow diplomats you realize they all have one thing in common--
PLAIDDER: Theyâre all men.
CONN: All right, two things. One, theyâre all men; two, none of them are ambassadors.
PLAIDDER: Well, I mean...theyâre diplomats, arenât they?
CONN: Yes. But any diplomatic mission to another nation is led by the ambassador. All these other people--the envoys, the charges dâaffaires--the ambassador outranks them. They take their orders from the ambassador. At least theyâre supposed to.
PLAIDDER: So who did they put in as ambassador to the Ukraine after they fired Yovanovitch?
CONN: Nobody.
PLAIDDER: What?
CONN: Nobody. There is no ambassador at that embassy now. It is being run by William Taylor, the charge dâaffaires. Better known to you as the man who texted Gordon Sundland telling him he thought it was crazy to hold up security aid over help with a political campaign.Â
PLAIDDER: Isnât Gordon Sondland an ambassador?
CONN: Heâs your ambassador to the European Union. He was never the ambassador to the Ukraine. He shouldnât have been doing ANY of this.
PLAIDDER: But I thought Kurt Volker--
CONN: Kurt Volker was an envoy. A part-time, UNPAID envoy.Â
PLAIDDER: Thatâs weird.
CONN: ALL OF THIS IS WEIRD! But thatâs what happens when the REAL mission is something that canât be acknowledged in public. The REAL mission, led by the REAL ambassador, your Mr. Giuliani, appears to have been to use the power and the purse of the United States to force the new president of Ukraine to fabricate evidence that would shore up a clutch of baseless conspiracy theories which would then allow your President to tilt the next election in his favor by smearing, not only his most likely political opponent, but all of the government agencies who provided the evidence of Russiaâs interference in your last presidential election.Â
PLAIDDER: And you canât put that on the website.
CONN: No you cannot. You cannot be seen to be pursuing those goals at all, because they are THOROUGHLY CORRUPT. They do not advance ANY foreign policy objective. They only benefit one man, viz., your president. Thatâs what corruption is. When you just say, thurk it, I donât care about the thurking mission any more, I donât care about my thurking country, from now on all I care about is me.Â
PLAIDDER: So they had their official ambassador pursuing the official mission, and then they had their corrupt mission...and I guess really this whole house of cards started falling when they decided that the official mission was getting in the way of the corrupt mission.Â
CONN: Exactly.Â
PLAIDDER: Thanks for explaining that.
CONN: Youâre welcome. Now. Can you explain something to me?
PLAIDDER: I will attempt it.
CONN: Why, of all the people who could have been chosen to lead this important though entirely corrupt diplomatic mission, did your president choose Mr. Giuliani?
PLAIDDER: *sigh*
CONN: Oh dear. This is going to take a while, isnât it.
PLAIDDER: So itâs like this. Rudy Giuliani was the mayor of New York City in September of 2001. When the Twin Towers were destroyed on September 11, Giuliani became an American hero. And to some extent, legitimately. You canât imagine the kind of shock it was. We hadnât had an attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941. Nobody had ever imagined this, nobody had ever planned for it. Our President at the time--who is now, regrettably, only the SECOND worst president of the past half-century--utterly failed this test. He froze like a deer in the headlights, then disappeared from public view. Rudy Giuliani was out there in the spotlight doing his job, leading his city through something no mayor of New York had ever had to deal with. Even some New Yorkers who hated him for other reasons at least felt reassured that he was on the case and would get them through this.Â
CONN: Iâm very surprised to hear it.
PLAIDDER: Of course you are. Because I donât know what happened, but at some point in the past eighteen years Rudy Giuliani became a decomposing husk within which the remnants of his former self have turned into a festering ball of insanity and corruption. He and Buttercup go back a ways because they were both big men in New York in the 1980s and they got to be friends. So Giuliani was one of the relatively few big-name Republicans willing to stump for him in 2016, before anyone believed he would be elected. And during that campaign, Giuliani just...abased himself. I mean Buttercup went low, he went lower. He just...I mean...he crawled, he toadied, he literally slavered. It was disgusting. But it earned him Buttercupâs favor. And I do not know why--I do not know why, Conn--these men who abase themselves before Buttercup seem to become consumed by some passion that I cannot call love but which seems to have some of its features, including infatuation and recklessness and a willingness to sacrifice oneâs own good for the good of the beloved. I mean Iâve never seen anything like--
PLAIDDER:
CONN: Friend, are you all right?
PLAIDDER: Sorry, Iâm just realizing that I have in fact seen this before.
CONN: Where?
PLAIDDER: This is how all of Lythrilâs minions feel about her. They canât really love her because she would never return it. And they know she will erase them if they ever displease her. And yet they fawn on her and obsess over her and try to outdo each other in their self-abasement and devotion to someone who definitely will never see them as equals, or even really as human. They do not protect themselves from her. They just render themselves up to her entirely, and she destroys them, and they just...love it.
CONN: Itâs simple enough, friend.Â
PLAIDDER: Really?
CONN: They worship her power. They love power and they know that she wields a kind of pure, irresistible, unadulterated power that they canât handle. They can never HAVE it; but they want to be as near to it as they can get.Â
PLAIDDER: Maybe thatâs it. Buttercup is their dark user, and theyâre the minions.
CONN: Well this is why I printed out this photo of Marie Yovanovitch. Sheâs not a minion. She knows what corruption is and she decided to fight it instead of serving it. We diplomats, you know, we canât be shriias. But we have our own code. We have our own bright and dark. You know, with maybe more gray area in there than you would be happy about. But still. In all this, you find the light where you can. And why not set it up here where everyone can see it?
PLAIDDER: All right, Conn. But please. I beg of you. Help me clean up the remains of your last twelve Nauchtian breakfast stacks and then letâs go for a walk or something, all right?
CONN: All right.
PLAIDDER: The next episode is going to happen soon enough, Iâm pretty sure.
This Fcking Impeachment: Episode 2, Following the Strongest
PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to This Fucking Impeachment, Weekend Edition. With me in the studio is Conn mac Emer. Conn, thanks for coming in on a weekend, I couldnât get Gill to do it.
CONN: It is my pleasure. I mean that.
PLAIDDER: Thanks, I appreciate--
CONN: I LIVE FOR THIS.
PLAIDDER: Oooook...Conn, events that have unfolded since our last episode reminded me of one we taped during the government shutdown, which was called âThe Art of the Possible.â
CONN: Oh yeah. I remember that.
PLAIDDER: Good. I wanted to--
CONN: Thatâs the one where you were arguing with me up one side and down the other and then just about an hour after that episode aired it turned out that I was ENTIRELY CORRECT.
PLAIDDER: Not entirely, friend. You were right about this part--Kleark, can you run the clip--
CONN: Look, with a process like this, itâs like a dance between what actually happens and what people believe is possible. Sometimes a thing has to actually happen before people believe it can happen.
PLAIDDER: Like that asshole becoming President of the United States.
CONN: Exactly. And sometimes, a thing canât happen until enough people start to believe it could happen.
PLAIDDER: With you so far, friend.
PLAIDDER: But on the other hand, you did make the following predictions--Kleark, can we have clip #2 please--
CONN: When he loses the support of his party, he will go. Either they will impeach and remove him, orâand I think this much more likelyâthey will promise him that if he resigns they will not put him in jail. And he will do it.
PLAIDDER:--thanks, Kleark--and these predictions have NOT come true.
CONN: Yet.
PLAIDDER: I KNEW YOU WERE--
CONN: I know you knew. I just didnât want to disappoint.
PLAIDDER: Well, anyway, indeed, I have started to think you might be right about some of this.
CONN: I am right about ALL of it.
PLAIDDER: Iâve started to think that impeachability might be like electability.
CONN: In our country we have neither of these concepts.
PLAIDDER: Itâs basically our version of âmost people follow the strongest.â
CONN: Oh. I get it.
PLAIDDER: So then--
CONN: No, wait, I donât.
PLAIDDER: OK. âElectabilityâ is something people talk about as if it is some kind concrete thing. In fact, âelectabilityâ is ârealâ in that it can have real-world effects, but it is not ârealâ in that it is not based on any material givens. Electability is a product of the collective imagination. It is self-creating, self-sustaining, and (sometimes) self-defeating. You become electable when enough people believe that you are electable. Anxiety about âelectabilityâ is a real problem in Democratic primaries, because it leads people to vote for whoeverâs considered the most âelectableâ candidate instead of the one they want. Then, when the most âelectableâ person wins the primary, everyoneâs depressed at how middle of the road and boring and Republican-lite they are, and they donât turn out, and thatâs how you get things like Buttercup winning that fucking election.
CONN: And Biden was supposed to be your most âelectableâ candidate?
PLAIDDER: Yes. Because he was an old white man who stood next to Obama for 8 years.
CONN: Your country truly is a magical and bizarre place.
PLAIDDER: I know. Anyway, what was beginning to happen before all this came out is that perceptions of âelectabilityâ were starting to change. The fact that Elizabeth Warrenâs events are drawing large crowds has led people to start wondering whether she might actually be âelectable.â This has led to her rising in the polls, and to Biden dropping--because people who liked her all along but thought she wasnât âelectableâ are now starting to back her. I think her campaign managers understand this. They have been working very hard to create âelectabilityâ for her and it seems to be working.
CONN: So in your country, people wonât vote for their candidate if they donât think that candidate will win.
PLAIDDER: Not everyone, but--
CONN: Thus ensuring that their candidate doesnât win.
PLAIDDER: Friend, if you will allow me to quote âWaving Through A Windowâ from the musical Dear Evan Hansen, liberal voters in this country have learned to slam on the brakes before theyâve even turned the key.
CONN: I donât understand any of that sentence.
PLAIDDER: Ironically, Buttercupâs election has sort of broken the electability thing, because now people are like, well fuck, ANYONE can be electable.
CONN: But this show is about impeachment...?
PLAIDDER: Iâm coming to that. I think all those public opinion polls they did showing Americans didnât support Buttercupâs impeachment worked the same way. I think people said they were against impeachment because they thought too many other people were against impeachment. As long as they thought impeachment didnât have enough popular support, they didnât want to support impeachment either. Because they thought that if impeachment really WAS that unpopular, impeaching Buttercup would only screw up the 2020 elections. But, like, half of those people with whom impeachment was supposed to be âunpopularâ were people thinking, I so fucking WANT this guy impeached but not if itâs gonna cost us the House in 2020. In fact I think that impeachment hasnât really been âunpopular;â itâs just that too many people thought it was impossible.
CONN: But you donât have any evidence for this.
PLAIDDER: I do not. But I do know that some early polling suggests that now that it looks like itâs actually going to happen, impeachment is suddenly becoming more âpopular.â Hereâs one by Politico/Morning Consult showing a 7 point jump in people who want Buttercup impeached. Democratic support for it has increased 13%--but Republican support for it has doubled (from 5% to 10%, but still) and now 39% of independents also want him impeached.
CONN: Thatâs one poll.
PLAIDDER: Five thirty-eight has more.
CONN: They say itâs all still preliminary.
PLAIDDER: Dude, which of us is supposed to be the optimist here?
CONN: Friend, I am EXPLODING with optimism at this moment, but not because of polling. Or because of whatâs happening with âimpeachability.â
PLAIDDER: All right then, what lit your optimism fuse today?
CONN: You have forgotten something very important in this art of the possible.
PLAIDDER: All right, what?
CONN: Your presidentâs enablers, cronies, and craven toadies need to believe that itâs possible that his power over them might come to an end.
PLAIDDER: OK, so electability, impeachability, and...
CONN: Letâs call it destructability.
PLAIDDER: I like it!
CONN: I think your presidentâs destructability index is on the rise. I think it will only accelerate from here.
PLAIDDER: Thereâs no polling for that.
CONN: No. But if you look at the stories coming out now, you can clearly see that people who have been tolerating this monster for years purely out of fear of the consequences are starting to imagine a world in which he is no longer in power. And they would like to enter that world without having been utterly despoiled of their dignity and self-respect.
PLAIDDER: I wouldnât have thought they still had any.
CONN: Friend, the number of people in the world who are as completely solipsistic and thoroughly amoral as your president is very small. Most people care something about the good opinion of their fellow-humans, even if itâs only their families and friends. Itâs one thing to go along with a corrupt regime thinking that nobody will ever know about the thousand little compromises you made and the scores of presidential evils you concealed. Itâs another to lie awake at night thinking about what will happen when the man youâve been servicing has been brought down and now everyone who helped him is going to be dragged through the mire.
PLAIDDER: But is anyone really imagining that, apart from people like you and me?
CONN: Well, thereâs already been one resignation. You donât resign over a scandal if you still trust your boss to protect you. Also someone is telling the press about the calls with Mohammad Bin Salman and Vladimir Putin which were also stored on that classified server--presumably in hopes that someone else will be held responsible for it.
PLAIDDER: I kind of want to know how that Jamal Khashoggi conversation went, but I also kind of really, really donât.
CONN: Steve Schwarzman, one of these âunofficialâ envoys that your president seems to have used so much, is now contradicting your president in public--because heâs afraid of being drawn into this. Your Secretary of State has been subpoenaed. John Bolton appears to have been involved in all this--heâs just left on very bad terms. Meanwhile, your president is wildly flailing around looking for people he can throw to the wolves--starting, amazingly, with his own vice president. Which was bad strategy, because everyone ELSE watches that and says, âIf the boss has already turned on his #2, he will CERTAINLY turn on me.â And so theyâve started to turn on your president, pre-emptively.
PLAIDDER: Because mostly people follow the strongest.
CONN: Yes.
PLAIDDER: But nobody REALLY knows whoâs the strongest.
CONN: Exactly.
PLAIDDER: So people who stop believing heâs the strongest, stop following him.
CONN: Correct.
PLAIDDER: And if enough people stop following...
CONN: Then those 35 Republican Senators who have always hated him will throw him onto the pyre and act like theyâre the ones who saved the country from him.
PLAIDDER: Well. I guess weâll see.
CONN: YOU will see that I am correct.
PLAIDDER: Yeah, maybe.
CONN: You want to bet against me? Just to make it interesting.
PLAIDDER: Well, weâre out of time for now. Tune in...I dunno, could be 4 hours from now, for our next episode of This Fucking Impeachment!
This Fcking Impeachment: Episode One, The Fire of Union
PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to This Fucking Emergencyâs exciting new spinoff: This Fucking Impeachment. With me in the studio today is the happiest imaginary man in the world. Please welcome the unpublished-fictional man, the very little-known myth, the only-to-the-select-few legend, Conn mac Emer!
CONN: WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
PLAIDDER: I see Conn has already started celebrating...and for the first but probably not the last time, please welcome to the show another imaginary politician, the Nationâs own Gill Nileton.
GILL: I thought Ideirens couldnât drink.
CONN: We canât.
GILL: You kind of SEEM like youâve been--
CONN: The exalted mood you observe in me, friend, is not the artificial product of poisonous libations, but the exhilaration of LINN SHANGHLAIM! YEEEE HAAAAAA!!
GILL: I know you told me what that means, but--
PLAIDDER: Itâs an Old Tongue phrase that sort of translates as âthe fire of union.â
GILL: I still donât know what that means.
PLAIDDER: As I understand it, linn shanghlaim is used by members of the Seated Leaders to describe the experience of spontaneously and rapidly coming together to support a single piece of legislation or course of action.Â
GILL: Nothingâs spontaneous in politics.
CONN: Spoken like a man whoâs lived all his life under a two-party system. The Seat doesnât have parties. We have a bunch of people who each only care about what happens in their home district. BUT. Once in a while, something happens thatâs so important, for reasons either venal or noble, that everyone puts that petty local tarbfnaa aside and comes together to deal with it. And thatâs linn shanghlaim, and it is the reason I get up in the thurking morning. WOOOOOO!!!
GILL: I have literally never seen you this happy.
PLAIDDER: Well you have to understand, Nancy Pelosi announced yesterday that theyâve launched an impeachment inquiry.
GILL: Impeachment. This is the thing that happened to this âBill Clintonâ that Iâm supposed to have been based on.
PLAIDDER: Yes. But you see, itâs also a thing that ALMOST happened to a guy named Richard Nixon that neither of you have ever heard of.
GILL: I still donât understand.
PLAIDDER: Our...president...has just admitted that he abused the power of his office to force a third party to dig up dirt on someone who was quite possibly going to be running against him for president.Â
GILL: And?
PLAIDDER: And thatâs Watergate. For 40 years now every political scandal has had âgateâ attached to it, in honor of the Watergate scandal. But this is actually the only scandal since Watergate that actually deserves that suffix. Because this...president...has just done EXACTLY what the House was prepared to impeach Nixon for back in 1974, only in a MUCH WORSE way. All this time everyoneâs known that this jackass should be impeached but theyâve been afraid to do it because so much of this stuff is unprecedented and because this...asshole...has been using his power to gaslight everyone into thinking well, maybe this ISNâT really an impeachable offense. But here is something that everyone knows, from history, actually IS an impeachable offense and furthermore is serious enough that the prospect of getting impeached for it forced that son of a bitch to resign.
CONN: And so as soon as that became clear...WHOOSH! The fire of union!
PLAIDDER: Because now, by impeaching him, theyâre not repeating the Clinton impeachment, theyâre repeating the Nixon one. Thatâs what Pelosi and friends have been worried about all this time. When the Republicans impeached...letâs say, your namesake...
GILL: This Clinton.
PLAIDDER: Yes. When they impeached him, it was over a single instance of perjury, in which he lied about the fact that he had drawn a 22 year old intern into a sexual relationship with him.Â
GILL: I thought they impeached him over the sex.
PLAIDDER: No. Technically, the High Crime and Misdemeanor at stake there was his lying about it under oath.
GILL: But your president lies--
PLAIDDER: Exactly. Exactly. But, you see, the Clinton impeachment was clearly politically motivated. The Republicans wouldnât accept the fact that theyâd lost the White House, so they investigated Clinton until they turned up something they could use. This, by the way, is exactly what Buttercupâs defenders are always saying the Democrats are doing now.
GILL: Which they actually are.
PLAIDDER: The difference, Gill, is that Buttercup actually is unfit to hold this office in every measurable way. Heâs constantly abusing his power--not just in this phone call, but in every action he takes as President. He lies like he breathes. He upended the FBI and the Department of Justice to try to stop the Mueller investigation. He fires everyone who displays a shred of integrity or an ounce of loyalty to anything other than himself. He encourages foreign governments to bribe him by using his hotel properties. He embezzles taxpayer money by directing government entities to use his hotel properties. I cannot even list all the ways in which he has proved that he acts always and only in his own interests, even when that goes against the interests of the country he supposedly governs. He illegally blocks money that Congress has appropriated for things he doesnât want to do or redirects money that Congress appropriated for some other purpose. He refuses to obey the law whenever it contravenes his needs, desires, or even whims. He has corrupted the entire Department of Justice and turned the Attorney General of the United States into his personal defense lawyer. He accepted help from fucking Vladimir Putin in the 2016 election and NOW--as a fucking SITTING PRESIDENT--he is actively soliciting help from Zelensky in the upcoming 2020 election. And thatâs just the illegal stuff. Do not get me STARTED on the profoundly immoral things he has done with this office and to this country. He is not a president. He is a mob boss. He richly deserves to be impeached, and now at last he will be.
CONN: Look at you, drawing up the articles of impeachment already!
PLAIDDER: Every right-minded citizen of this country has had their own personal articles of impeachment drawn up for at least a year now.
GILL: I feel your pain--
PLAIDDER: Please let me never hear you say that again--
GILL: --but this seems very risky to me. Theyâve already released the transcript of the phone call; and theyâre right, thereâs no explicit quid pro quo.
CONN: Oh friend. Do you think a man as practiced in extortion and bullying as this gleachinai is would be stupid enough to use the if-then formula? He blocks their aid, then calls--
PLAIDDER: REGARDLESS! Holding up the aid that Congress had voted to the Ukraine--for ANY reason--was ILLEGAL! He doesnât get to DECIDE whether he disburses that aid or not! He is supposed to EXECUTE the laws that Congress passes, that is why they call it the fucking EXECUTIVE branch. He is not supposed to LEGISLATE. Thatâs not how this works. THATâS NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.
GILL: I think you should maybe go to commercial, stranger, youâre getting very excited.
CONN: Clearly, youâve never watched a single episode of this show.
PLAIDDER: Fucking with that aid money is IN ITSELF an impeachable offense! We donât even need to GET to the question of whether he did it as a quid pro quo.Â
CONN: Right. Just like the fact that he asked a foreign head of state to go after his political opponent is impeachable in itself, whether or not he ALSO bribed or extorted him to do it.
PLAIDDER: Thank you. I only wish weâd done this sooner.
CONN: I donât.
PLAIDDER: And now we come to it. Youâre about to tell me that Pelosi has been playing seven-dimensional Dubh Solus all this time, arenât you?
CONN: Yes I am.
PLAIDDER: Oh Lord.
CONN: I kept saying, not yet, not yet. And would you listen to me?
PLAIDDER: No.
CONN: No, you would not. Look. Your people donât exactly have the concept of linn shanghlaim, but your Nancy Pelosi has been in politics all her life. She knows the fire of union when she sees it. And she also knows when she doesnât see it. The Mueller investigation did not light that fire. Even if there hadnât been all the chicanery around releasing the report, the fact that it was so inconclusive just threw water on everything. But she let him think he was winning. Because she knew that if he did, heâd do something worse and more dramatic. And now he has.Â
PLAIDDER: But Conn...linn shanghlaim is supposed to include everybody. Itâs supposed to cut across existing...well, you donât have formal political parties, but letâs say factional divisions. But there are no Republicans on fire right now. Itâs 199 Democrats and Justin Amash.
CONN: I know. We cannot expect miracles.
PLAIDDER: But Pelosi did! She kept saying she wouldnât do this until she had bipartisan--
CONN: Friend, do you seriously believe that she ever thought for a moment that impeachment would have bipartisan support? She works with those people EVERY. DAY.Â
PLAIDDER: Well then why--
CONN: Because waiting for this âbipartisan supportâ which was never going to appear allowed her to delay impeachment indefinitely UNTIL the right moment came along. Which is this one.
PLAIDDER: You canât prove any of this.
CONN: Look at the results. Instead of dragging a bunch of reluctant, scared, misgiving-filled people behind her into an impeachment half of them donât want, sheâs barely one step ahead of a charging horde, all lit up with the fire of union. This is going to be unstoppable.
GILL: But isnât thing going to play into your presidentâs hands? Heâs supposed to love conflict, and drama, and his people are always saying impeachment is a political winner for them, and--
CONN: LOOK AT THE RESULTS. For months now, Congress has been demanding documents and testimony and what have you and this administrationâs response has been, sue me for it. Word gets out that impeachment is actually in motion and whatâs the first thing that happens? The transcript of that call has been released. The whistleblower complaint is maybe going to come out tomorrow. What does that tell you?
GILL: That theyâre scared.
CONN: Yes. It tells you that impeachment was the ONLY thing this crew ever took seriously. Itâs the ONLY thing that was ever capable of forcing them to obey the law. They never wanted this. They feared it. That âit helps us politicallyâ stuff was pure tarbhfnaa put out by his minions to stave it off.Â
PLAIDDER: Pelosi also said thatâs what he--
CONN: Because she was ALSO trying to stave it off. It was convenient for her to pretend to believe their tarbhfnaa as long as she didnât think the time was right. But she never did.Â
PLAIDDER: So she lied to us.
CONN: Friend, not all good women are shriias.
GILL: Now THATâS the truth.
PLAIDDER: Oh boy.
CONN: Watch her and learn, Gill. Watch and learn.
PLAIDDER: Well, weâll all be watching. Itâs time to wrap up this episode of This Fucking Impeachment...but there will be more!
PLAIDDER: Hello and welcome to this weekâs edition of This Fucking Emergency, an intermittent imaginary cable talk show where I sit down with some of the many imaginary characters I have created or befriended over the years and discuss vital issues of the day. Please welcome back to the program everyoneâs favorite imaginary diplomat, legislator, and former sheep dealer, Conn mac Emer...
CONN: Why are there so many chairs on set today?
PLAIDDER: Because there were two mass shootings within 24 hours last weekend.Â
CONN: I donât see the...
PLAIDDER: OK. I wrote Redemption for a lot of reasons. One of them was that I was trying to understand and maybe imagine a solution for school shootings. This was in 2005, I would just like to remind our viewers. Aught fucking five. Fourteen years ago I finished this novel and I was already, at that point, permanently appalled by this countryâs tolerance for mass shootings in schools.Â
CONN: So what happened to Daphie at Decalon High--
PLAIDDER: Yes. That happens in my country. OFTENER and OFTENER. Now you didnât have a lot to do with that storyline because you were caught up in the other horror of life in the aughts, viz., the War On Terror. But anyway, my point is: because I wrote that novel, when something like this happens...I mean I donât even call them. Your fellow-characters just...show up.
DAPHIE: Hello?
PLAIDDER: Hi, Daphie. If you want to know what youâre doing here--
DAPHIE: Because of the baby and the mother and the father.
PLAIDDER: Exactly. Only in this case, only the baby survived. Because in my world, evidently, we only have one kind of magic.
CONN: I thought your world didnât have shri.
PLAIDDER: We definitely donât.Â
CONN: Then what kind of magic do you--
PLAIDDER: Chandra knows.
CHANDRA: Hi.
CONN: Where the hell did you come from all of a--
PLAIDDER: Chandra, can you just say it? That line of yours thatâs been in my head since El Paso.
CHANDRA: Found a church on stupid racist doctrine, you get stupid racist magic.
PLAIDDER: Yes. And you know how you get even MORE stupid racist magic? You choose, as the person to lead your nation, a stupid racist mage.
CONN: Nothing about your president seems magical to me.
PLAIDDER: Yes, well, thatâs the Ideiren point of view. But what Chandraâs talking about is National. It is in fact the only kind of magic in your universe that originated in the Nation.
CHANDRA: I always thought it was all bullshit. I mean...my family definitely tried to annihilate me with it, and here I still am--
PLAIDDER: All right, let me explain what I mean by âmagicâ in this context.Â
AINE: This should be interesting.
CONN: Shriia! I didnât know youâd be here.
AINE: Neither did I.
PLAIDDER: Like I said. I donât even call them; they just come. Anyway. I had an old friend over for dinner the other day who was talking about what we call âthe magic of the theater.â Now, when I say that Iâm usually being ironic, but he seems to really believe in it and to be honest Iâm not totally sure that I donât. A lot of contemporary performance theory is based at some distance on the idea of theater as a ritual which at some point in the distant past was efficacious.
SONNIA: Effiwhatnow?
PLAIDDER: And welcome to you too, Sonnia.Â
AINE:Â âEfficaciousâ means that it actually makes something happen. So, take haons linn.
SONNIA: You mean that weird thing you do at five in the morning.
AINE: To you itâs a weird thing I do at five in the morning. To me and to the rest of my people itâs how we help create the world. To you itâs a ritual the same way, I donât know, brushing your teeth is a ritual. To us, itâs efficacious. It keeps the world together. I can skip it under extraordinary circumstances once in a while and things will be all right, but thatâs only because other shriias will be doing haons linn somewhere else. If we all stopped doing haons linn...the sun wouldnât rise. The whole world would just stay dark, forever.
SONNIA: Really?
AINE: Yes, really.
SONNIA: So what explains the fact the sun rises in the Nation?
AINE: It rises in the Nation because weâre all on the same island.
SONNIA: What about Dubhinis? Thereâs no shriias in Dubhinis.
TYRNA: Donât you wish.
PLAIDDER: Hello, Tyrna, thanks for joining us.
AINE: Donât be hard on her, Tyrna, she was raised to believe--
TYRNA: I know what she was raised to believe in.
SONNIA: So you do haons linn.
TYRNA: I donât. Thatâs an Ideiren thing. But we do other things to keep our world together. Despite what you hear from Chandraâs people--
CHANDRA: Theyâre not my people any more--
TYRNA: --the Nation is not the center of the universe. The Nation only continues to exist because the rest of us are building the world around it.Â
SONNIA: Thatâs nuts. The world is real, whether--
TYRNA: Nobodyâs saying itâs not.
PLAIDDER: Well, I kind of am. I mean, your world isnât actually real. Itâs created. Itâs created by me, you know, with the support of the people who read it. And that means Tyrnaâs absolutely right. I wouldnât have created this world just to write about the Nation. On the other hand, I couldnât, or at least I didnât, create Ideire or Dubhinis or Plenana or any of the other islands without also creating the Nation.
TYRNA: Why the hell not?Â
AINE: Tyrna!
PLAIDDER: No, sheâs right to ask. Of all the places in your universe, the Nation is the one most like the place where I come from.
CHANDRA: Thatâs...really depressing.
PLAIDDER: Youâre telling me.Â
CONN: Werenât we talking about the magic of the theater?
PLAIDDER: Yes. Yes we were. Anyway, so my friendâs idea of the magic of the theater is this: You have a vision of something you want to make happen. The thing does not come into existence at that moment. You have to work to make it happen. You find other people and you share the vision with them, and you find a place, and you find a lot of other stuff, and eventually the thing that you imagined becomes real--so real that other people can see it. This is an ordinary process that goes on all over the place all the time. But when you think about it, this is actually kind of what magic is. You imagine something, and that makes it real.
SONNIA: Iâm not getting any of this.
AINE: I think weâd better move on. I spent months trying to move Sonnia past this stage and it never happened.
PLAIDDER: And then what I said was--and this was before all of THIS happened--thereâs a passage in one of the Little House books where Pa explains the railroad the same way. The engineers imagine a railroad, and then everybody goes out west and works 24/7 and digs dirt and pounds steel and eats pancackes and gets paid because of something thatâs just an idea, that doesnât exist at all. Itâs a really interesting passage--itâs in By the Shores of Silver Lake, I think.Â
CHANDRA: Of course the real magic there is--
PLAIDDER: Imperialism and capitalism, yes. But thatâs my point. This having a vision and making it real thing is a lot of fun and I think, mostly, good for people in the theater, as long as the Vision-Haver is, you know, a clueful and compassionate person who cares about the human consequences of their magic. But thereâs nothing inherently good about this process of making a vision real. It can be bad. It can be really bad. It can be REALLY. FUCKING. BAD.
DAPHIE: Like...
PLAIDDER: Yes. Exactly.
SONNIA: I donât know what sheâs--
PLAIDDER: Daphieâs whole novel is about me trying to understand one particular kind of very bad magic. I was trying to understand how a thing like the shooting at Decalon High is imagined and then how it is made real. Over and over, oftener and oftener. It seemed to me as if every evil vision, every malicious imagination in my world had collaborated to create this thing. I wrote...I donât even know how many hundred thousand words went into that novel. Letâs just say the problem and the solution in Redemption are about three times as complicated as they are in any of the earlier novels. And when I look back on it, I can only see one thing about that explanation that I think is really true, that I think is still true now.
CONN: Which is what?
CHANDRA: Stupid racist magic.
PLAIDDER: Bingo.
CHANDRA: âBingoâ?!
PLAIDDER: Itâs...oh, never mind. Look, about fifty years ago Jerome Bixby was trying to understand the magic of war and he wrote a script for a show called Star Trek called âDay of the Dove.â And in that episode, there are these energy beings that feed off aggression. So they try to bait all the people on this one ship into fighting each other, so they can feed. The individual Starfleet or Klingon people think they want war but thereâs actually some force out there making them want it, making them do things, imagining a war and then making it happen. And itâs remarkable how durable this idea is. I mean you could link it back to Tolstoy and War And Peace, where he tries to understand a thing like the war of 1812 and takes all those thousands of pages to prove that none of the historical explanations for it matter worth a damn. The war happened because Providence wanted to move people from west to east and this was the way Providence found of making that real. Or in season 2 of Stranger Things, they start calling the monster the Mind-Flayer and everything gets tentacly and it is weird, it is REALLY weird for me, how much that damn thing looks like an arani--like the biggest fucking arani ever--
AINE: I hate arani.
PLAIDDER: Yes! I hate them too! They are the nastiest fucking things in the ether apart from the kraikk, and as with the Mind-Flayer and those pumpkin patch death vines and all of these things are metaphors for whatever it is out there that keeps making humans hurt and kill each other when clearly, clearly, that is not what most individual human beings want or what most of them would do if they were free.
TYRNA: Says you.
PLAIDDER: All right. Says me.Â
TYRNA: You want to know what I think?
PLAIDDER: Sure.
TYRNA: Put whatever metaphors you want on it. Under the costume itâs always greed. Just people grabbing what they can get and then trying to kill anyone who looks like they might take it from them. Throwing the whole world out of balance. I keep trying to right the balance and itâs like water in a sieve. A hundred women like me couldnât do it. A thousand couldnât do it.
CHANDRA: All right, greed, definitely, but like...I mean...the cruelty. The cruelty isnât just about greed. Sometimes the cruelty actually interferes with the greed. People have a choice between them and they choose cruelty.Â
TYRNA: I never said your magic was efficient. Itâs been pretty efficacious, all the same.
CHANDRA: But why the cruelty? I mean thatâs the question thatâs kept a dozen of my therapists up at night. Cruelty beyond monetary gain, cruelty beyond utility. Cruelty as...as, like, a god unto itself.
TYRNA: Cruelty and greed are both lusts and theyâre limbs of the same tree grown from the same rotten root.
PLAIDDER: So anyway...what I said was, if theater is magic, then, fascism is magic too. Someone has a vision. He calls out to other people. Other people share that vision. Then they make it real. And itâs hideous. Thatâs what--I mean, Rhinoceros.
CONN: I beg your pardon?
PLAIDDER: This old French play where everyone turns into rhinoceroses. No reason, they just do it. Because somethingâs making it happen. Itâs not called magic, itâs called absurdism. But itâs the same thing: why the fuck is this hideous transformation taking place? Why canât anyone stop it? I mean I think the arani and all those metaphors Tyrna is quite rightly impatient with--itâs our way of representing the just--fucking--irrationality of it all. It starts to seem at some point as if nobody really WANTS this, itâs just happening because the thing thatâs making it happen is too powerful to stop. Like, an arani doesnât have an agenda. It just grows. Thatâs all it does. It has no brain and no intelligence, itâs just an empty bag of guts with filaments hooked into a hundred different heads. It can be manipulated by an intelligent and powerful human...to a point. And after that it just...feeds. This image that we have of this monstrous indefinable thing that makes us do horrible things to each other--I mean--we made it real. We MADE IT REAL. We keep making it. First itâs newspapers then itâs phones then itâs radio then itâs television now itâs the internet. And THAT MAN goes out there and fills up this arani with his--he goes out there and does his--
CHANDRA: Stupid racist magic.
PLAIDDER: People in my country mostly donât believe that curses are efficacious. But they are. If youâre powerful enough, you can curse people. If youâre the president of the united states, you can call down evil on someone, and the evil will materialize. He says the words--and theyâre stupid, stupid words--but they still have power. They suggest images to people who hear them. And then people go and make them real. And then he can say it had nothing to do with him. Because there is no material, no evidentiary, no objective chain of causation. But everyone knows heâs doing it. Everyone knows. Regardless of what they admit. They know that his stupid racist magic is killing people. In El Paso. In Dayton. In Gilroy. Heâs imagined a world in which white men are omnipotent and heâs making it real.
AINE: Trying to make it real.
PLAIDDER: Aine, it *is* real, donât you understand, itâs real in a way that much as I love you you can never be.
CONN: If that gleachinai is doing magic then heâs not the only one. There are other visions in your country. There are better visions. People share them and work at them and some of them come true some of the time. You know that. I donât understand why you say that this is the only kind of magic your world has. It isnât.
PLAIDDER: But stupid racist magic just keeps killing people and I donât understand why it just keeps getting stronger and more powerful and--
TYRNA: BECAUSE IT HAS GUNS.
PLAIDDER: OK, I get that, but--
TYRNA: Do you though? I donât think you do. Thereâs nothing magical about any of this. Yeah, words have power, even when idiots use them. Because the idiots HAVE THE GUNS. All of this nonsense keeps happening in your country because nobody has taken the guns away from the idiots.
PLAIDDER: Itâs very hard to take a gun away from an idiot.
TYRNA: Honey, what about me or my backstory would ever make you think that I do NOT know that?
PLAIDDER: Nothing.
TYRNA: Damn right. Yeah, itâs hard. Itâs hard watching idiots ruin the world. Itâs a crime and a shame. Itâs unfair. But none of that is a new thing for me, all right? Iâve been fighting stupid racist magic all my life and I will tell you this. You want the balance restored, you have to take some guns away from some idiots. Now when is that going to happen, in your world?
PLAIDDER: Well, Tyrna, it could be said that your whole universe is the result of the fact that it is easier for me to imagine demons and monsters and devils and people shooting fire out of their hands than it is to imagine the government of my actual country actually taking guns away from idiots.
TYRNA: Wow.
PLAIDDER: Yeah.
DAPHIE: It isnât always idiots.
PLAIDDER: Daphie...
DAPHIE: Jarad wasnât an idiot.
PLAIDDER: I know. But some idiot made it easy for Jarad to get a RAF. I mean I never even explained how that happened, because in my own world thatâs not an extrarordinary event. Like, of course he could find a RAF when he wanted one, thatâs how things just are. I was...when I wrote your book, I was...not interested in that part of it. I was chasing all these other explanations, because that was what we all did, back in the aughts.
CHANDRA: So...I mean...what. You...regret the whole...our whole story?
PLAIDDER: No, no no. I just feel like...well, it took me a long time to accept the fact that actual problems are sometimes less interesting than fictional ones. Like, the fact that a problem is hard to solve doesnât mean that its solution is fiendishly complicated. Sometimes the solution is really fucking simple. Too simple to entertain people. Too simple for narrative.
CONN: Is this, like, a two-hour special or something? Itâs already gone on way longer than normal.
PLAIDDER: I know. I can never resolve these things, I just have to...end them. So I am. Thanks for coming, everyone. I hope itâs a long time before I see you again.
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I feel like someone has finally given the Speech from the Dock.
I mean, I canât say that to that many people, but you guys will get it.Â
Spoilers for What You Wish For (AKA ANother Country)
The senseless and brutal violence that has increasingly become a part of American life haunts all of WOF, even before the series gets to Redemption. Itâs there from the beginning, in the lurers. Theamh and the other shriias spend a lot of time fighting the lurers, you know, with fire. But for what the lurers represent, the most important thing Theamh does at Dunta is to stand up there and tell people that the violence is going to end here.Â
Obama tried to do that, after Newtown and after the other shootings after Newtown. It was not efficacious. I donât blame Obama for that. Righteous anger in the face of evil was not something he could do authentically.
When I imagined a shooting survivor in Daphie in Redemption, I didnât imagine her as someone who could do that. Daphie was an inspiration through her actions, but by the time Redemption starts sheâs already lost control of the media narrative about her, and she was literally never able to speak about it, because of her motherâs magic.
No currently serving politician is capable of doing it. None of them, at any point on the spectrum. Chris Murphy of Connecticut has sometimes come close. He represents the Newtown survivors.
I feel like someone finally got up and gave that speech. Someone got up and said what had to be said so that the tide could turn. And it was a high school student named Emma Gonzalez.Â
Maybe this is the beginning of the long, slow victory. I guess weâll see.
I never did illustrations for Redemption. Partly because by that time it was clear that the day of the print editions was over, and partly because the cast of Redemption is just a lot harder to draw. I attempted Harrah a few times and just gave up. Then there is the fact that no matter what I do, the men I draw come out looking like women. Like poor Conn mac Emer here, with his big ugly yellow sweater on over his button-down shirt, trying to present the offer to Ustine..
Iâve been thinking about Conn a lot because of all the BS out there about Trump and his âdeals.â Conn was a bit of a challenge to write, because his value system is very different from the Orderâs. He has a utilitarian understanding of language--itâs a tool in the negotiation process--and for him, the ultimate goal is far more important than the truthfulness of his individual statements. Aineâs horrified when she watches Conn handle the first phone call from Ruthlin about releasing Kwenu because heâs clearly not saying what he really feels or believes. Conn thinks of that as an honest conversation because itâs all being done to help him get the best deal he can make for Kwenu.Â
Anyway, Conn would be thoroughly disgusted with Trump, who canât negotiate his way out of a damp paper bag even when heâs in a position of strength. From his point of view...well, Iâll let him tell you.
PLAIDDER: So what actually is a âdealâ?
CONN: When two or more parties agree to exchange one or more things with each other for their mutual benefit, thatâs a deal. If I have fifty Amstian Red sheep, and I canât afford to feed them, and youâre a wool dealer and you need fifty Amstian Red fleeces TOMORROW but you can only find twenty in this market and the prices asked are highway robbery, and we meet up at a tavern, you might say, look. Iâll pay you market price for the sheep if you will do the work of shearing them for me. And I might take that deal because Iâm worried Iâm not going to get a better offer and if they go all patchy and pink theyâre not even worth half of what I paid for them. You get the fleeces, which you want, and the sheep, which you donât want but which you figure you can sell on later, after all youâre a dealer. I get the sheep sold, which I want; I also have to throw in a lot of free labor, which I donât like, but my sweat is cheaper than just about any other currency you could ask for. Everyone gets something they want and everyone puts up with something theyâd rather not. You maybe come out of it a little better because you can sell the sheep separately; but I get out of a tight spot and thatâs worth something to me. Thatâs a deal.Â
PLAIDDER: And so...what does it mean to go around all day saying âI make the best dealsâ?
CONN: Number one, it means youâre a fool.
PLAIDDER: Why?
CONN: Because you always want the people youâre dealing with to think that THEY make the best deals. They will never agree to a bargain if they think it favors you. Nobody wants to be taken. Especially not Nauchtians. Half the art of negotiating is making people think theyâre winning when theyâre not. Of course I donât know how many deals I made, thinking I was winning, were actually better for the other party. But as I said: as long as everyone gets something, it will all more or less come out even in the end.Â
PLAIDDER: So what do you call it when the parties agree on conditions, but then one party refuses to honor them?
CONN: We call that a swindle.
PLAIDDER: And what do you call it when one party threatens to punish the other party if he wonât agree to your terms?
CONN: Thatâs extortion.Â
PLAIDDER: Come on. Donât tell me you havenât--
CONN: Look, you can basically do two things in negotiation, you can offer the other side something they want or you can make them afraid of losing something they need. But all this âdeal with me or Iâll ruin youâ business...you can try that once. If you make good on the threat, then you make enemies of all the other players, and they band together against you. If you donât make good on the threat, nobody pays any attention to it the next time you make it.
PLAIDDER: How much is diplomacy like dealing?
CONN: Diplomacy is about negotiation but itâs not really about transaction. You have a state of affairs you are trying to maintain, or a state of affairs you are trying to bring into being, and you are constantly on the lookout for ways to make that happen. Itâs not as simple as dealing. Itâs not, oh, I have some Marshlands prisoners and you have a public relations problem, letâs swap. You keep a lot of things in motion and you have to monitor all of them and keep looking for the moments when you can move one to change the others. Itâs more like playing dubh solus, actually.
PLAIDDER: You know that dubh solus is so complicated itâs impossible to actually play, right?
CONN: Have you tried it?
PLAIDDER: No.
CONN: Then you donât know, do you?
PLAIDDER: I hate strategy games.
CONN: Well, then I donât know how you write me.
PLAIDDER: Sometimes I wonder. Do you have any advice on how we should deal with...
CONN: I donât think anyone should ever deal with that man. He cheats everyone who tries it. If he were a dealer in Naucht we would deal with it by starving him. Everyone deals with everyone else until he goes out of business. Sometimes it doesnât work; sometimes people allow themselves to be bought, for whatever reason, and used as intermediaries, and the cheater survives. But what you have in charge right now is not a negotiator. Negotiation is about getting the most you can get with the little power you have. Thatâs where the skill comes in. He has all the power your government has to offer and canât secure cooperation from a single adversary. Thereâs something wrong with that picture.
PLAIDDER: Thanks, Conn. How do you like your portrait?
CONN: Iâll tell you what: if you let me get away without answering your question, Iâll tell you all of my Rules of Negotiation.