All posts by D.K. Strickland

A Right-Winger’s Adventures in Welfareland

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell, Animal Farm

In 1992, I ended a promising Navy career in order to be with my wife, who had refused to move to my next duty station. After a few blissful months of loving togetherness, she blindsided me with a divorce and I found myself marooned in one of the last places I wanted to be: the San Francisco Bay Area—the Land of Flakes, Fruits, and Nuts. Yes, they are just as crazy as they seem on TV. There’s a reason Nancy Pelosi keeps getting reelected.

As a newly created single father in a land where a $16 an hour job paid $7 an hour and a $45,000 house cost $175,000, I had to pull a rabbit out of my hat, and fast. Out of options, I swallowed my pride, asked my family for help and moved back to my home state where I enrolled at the main campus of the state university. Between my GI Bill and some educational grants, my son and I were able to make it, though it was a mighty struggle.

After a few months, something bizarre happened. My family insisted that I apply for welfare. Now, this was wildly out of character because in my family we had always considered nothing to be skeezier, slimier, more contemptible, and just plain parasitic than someone who went on welfare. I refused on principle, but they used Kryptonite on me: my son. My pride, it seems, was causing my child to suffer unnecessarily. I protested that it would be futile anyway because there was no way an able-bodied white male was going to be allowed on the dole in order to attend college. “Nonsense,” they said. “Single mothers go to college on welfare all the time. They can’t turn you down. It would be discrimination.”

Yeah, right.

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So, I began my experience in the previously unknown Tenth Circle of Dante’s Hell—the welfare office. I really stood out, there. The only other white person was a morbidly obese woman accompanied by a small army of mulatto children. Being that we were in the Southwest, everyone that worked there wanted to speak to me in Spanish. When I requested to be addressed in English, there was much eye-rolling and exasperated sighing. Eventually, the paperwork was done and we sat in the waiting room, an incongruous blue-eyed blond-haired pair in a hostile sea of brown eyes and black hair.

After an eternity, my name was called by my assigned caseworker, a stunningly attractive Latina with a penchant for skintight western-style clothes. We exchanged a few pleasantries as I settled in my chair, then she got down to business. “You’re not eligible.”

“Could you at least read my paperwork first?” I suggested.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re not eligible.”

There was no swaying her so I returned to the waiting room to explain to my son that we would continue to struggle. As we were talking, the caseworker stepped out of her office and saw us. After a brief hesitation, she walked over and asked, “Is this your son?” I admitted that he was and she engaged him in a brief conversation. When she was done, she said, “Come back to my office.” I did and, wham-bam, within a few minutes I—the welfare state’s greatest enemy—was a burden on society. I was allotted a generous amount of food stamps. She apologized that it wasn’t more.

welfarequeenA strange thing happened. At first, I followed my usual food budget and leftover food stamps started piling up. Already corrupted into thinking like a welfare bum, I began to worry that they might be tracked and that I would lose some of my allotment if it didn’t seem like I needed them. So, I bought meat. A lot of meat. We had steak three times a week on average. Up until then we had been eating only a pound of hamburger per week. The food stamps were still piling up so I started buying name brands instead of store brands and bringing home a lot of treats.

Meanwhile, an even stranger thing happened. The checks started coming. Checks for benefits that I hadn’t applied for. I called my caseworker to report the mistake and she told me, “It doesn’t matter. You’re entitled.” So, I deposited the checks. Eventually, a check arrived that was an energy assistance subsidy for heating and cooling costs. This was certainly a mistake because all my utilities were paid by my landlord. So, I called my caseworker again and was told, “It doesn’t matter. You’re entitled.” She then told me to stop bothering her and I did.

Now, I wasn’t getting the full welfare ride that some people get. Nonetheless, it was a cozy existence. I’ve never lived more comfortably with less stress in my life. All I had to do was go to school and do my single-dad thing. This continued until I remarried and my new wife’s income bumped me into ineligibility.welfare

The experience taught me a few things. First, white men aren’t supposed to get public assistance, they’re supposed to pay for other people’s public assistance. Second, welfare corrupts quickly and stifles initiative and self-responsibility just as fast as right-wing “racists” say. Third, the welfare system is as bloated, insane and arbitrary as it seems. Fourth, if you’re getting the full ride and still live in squalor, that’s on you. In fact, I recently read a report revealing that a job had to pay at least $50,000 a year just to break even with the full ride. In other words, if you can’t live a comfortable life on the full ride, you’re an incompetent idiot.

Just for the record, I’ve long since paid back all my benefits with the confiscatory taxes that I pay.

“Sexist” and “Misogynist,” but Chicks Loved It

When I was a kid, I always swore I would never be like the old-timers of the day. You know the type. Always complaining about the country going to hell in a handbasket and how we were too young to realize what we had already lost. How we scoffed at their foolishness. After all, we were the generation that had invented sex and were going to save the world with our forward thinking. Now, I am that guy and wish those old-timers were still around so I could apologize. Accuse me of being a free speech extremist and I will gladly confess.

I mentioned in my last post some books and authors that were once common and relatively mild, but are now considered subversive due to their non-progressive themes and values. Others were more daring and controversial, but still were dutifully stocked wherever books and magazines were sold. There once was a time when people who invoked free speech meant it. The old-timers were right. We have lost a lot and we’re losing more every day. It’s amazing how the PC crowd has managed to give us a world that’s prudish and crass at the same time.

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In my hometown we had a bookstore run by the most devout Christian you ever met. He always closed on Sundays so he could attend church. He also stocked the most extensive inventory of girlie magazines in town. I asked about the apparent contradiction and he told me it wasn’t his place to say what other adults should read. My step-mother would use her employee discount at work to buy those same magazines which she brought home for my father. Mandingo sat in the bookrack at your local supermarket next to The Cross and the Switchblade. There were the obligatory busybodies of course, but mostly what you wanted to read was your own business and nobody would blink an eye at your choices. Fortunately, the enlightened few dragged us out of these benighted dark-ages for our own good.

Which brings us to the books by John Norman and Sharon Green—science fiction with a difference. At one time they were as ubiquitous roguesgoras roaches, and often as highly regarded. The critics savaged them. The general public considered them obnoxious, when they considered them at all. These books occupied the antipodes of Political Correctness. It was hard to find anyone who would admit to reading them, much like the missing disco music fans today, but they sold and sold and sold, going through printing after printing. There was a niche out there and those books fit in it like a hand in a glove. These are not literary masterpieces by any measure, but of the two, Sharon Green is by far the better writer.

John Norman (real name John Lange) is a philosophy professor at Queens College in New York. He has some ideas, especially concerning male-female relationships, that could be accurately described as retrograde in the current milieu. His first book, Tarnsman of Gor (1966), the first of many in the Gor series (also known by other names) is a blatant rip-off of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars with a tad more raunch. The word “misogynistic” gets thrown around a lot in discussions of Norman’s work.

priestkingsgorNorman’s works could reasonably be dismissed as a juvenile (in the sense of immature) indulgence of male fantasy. A strange thing happened on the way to the forum though. The books are very, very popular with women—at least a certain subset of women. I used to take the “pocket books” idea very literally and I kept a paperback in my back pocket everywhere I went. When I tackled the Gor stories, an odd thing happened. I was approached by women—a lot of women. The conversation usually went something like this: “Oh! You’re reading the Gor books! They are so good!” This never happened with a man. I eventually read 25 of the books. They were OK at first, but an ordeal by the end. Norman never misses a chance to push his philosophy, resulting in absurdities like the protagonist taking the time during a kidnapping to explain to the victim her proper role as a woman—for 93 pages. In another book, the protagonist and a comrade take the time during a battle to discuss a woman at great length—a battle that’s going badly. A critic once remarked that the series starts as fair science fiction, but rapidly degenerates into pornography and travelogue. That is a reasonable assessment. If your curiosity is piqued enough to give the series a try, confine yourself to the first 5 books. Assassin of Gor (#5) is most popular, followed closely by Nomads of Gor (#4), but I thought Priest-Kings of Gor (#3) was best. If you wish to experience the decay, read to Hunters of Gor (#8). Going any further is just masochism.

Sharon Green came to be a writer because she read a few of the Gor books and thought John Norman got it all wrong. She believed that Norman “doesn’t understand female submission.” She embarked on her own series of books where, strangely, the female protagonist winds up in basically the same situations as in the Gor books, just for different reasons. Her books were intended as a rebuttal to Norman. Fate was cruel, however, as her books appealed to the same audience and she was dubbed “the female John Norman.” Jalav, the female protagonist of the Jalav—Amazon Warrior series is tedious in her own right, endlessly whining about being reduced to a sex slave instead of being allowed to die a noble warrior’s death.

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Whatever the shortcomings of these books, however, the fact remains that the freedom of speech is near absolute. Norman and Green had every right to write their books, and their fans had every right to read them. Most importantly, you have the right to read them if you so choose. The good times were coming to an end though. Both authors were published by Donald A. Wollheim of DAW books. In 1990, Wollheim died and was succeeded by his uber-feminist daughter, Elizabeth Wollheim. Virtually her first act was to order a halt to printing of Noman’s and Green’s books, on the unlikely justification of poor sales. It is commonly believed that the truth was that she objected to them personally. The books disappeared quickly from mainstream bookstores, then from used book stores. Interested readers couldn’t find copies for love nor money for many years. Green would reinvent herself as a more mainstream SF and fantasy author. Norman would disappear from print for 13 years. Green would comment later that it would be impossible to publish her early works in the current climate.

Technology would come to the rescue as it often does. Alternative publishing brought the old books back from Never-Never Land and allowed new books to be published. The vital thing is that, whatever their artistic merits, both authors were punished for their beliefs, opinions, and self-expression, as usual by the self-appointed arbiters of tolerance and open-mindedness. The principle at stake here is far more important than the books themselves. Read the books or don’t. It’s your business. The fact remains, however, there are droves of people for whom the Constitution is a punchline—and that’s terrifying. Popular speech by definition needs no protection. Beware, the Left never sleeps, and the battleground is your mind.

Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Treasure from the Past for a Demasculinized World

Are you old enough to remember those glorious days of yore when you couldn’t turn around in the bookstore or walk past the bookrack at your local grocery store without seeing the latest edition of The Destroyer, or The Executioner, or Perry Rhodan #1,000,006? They still exist, but you rarely find them in public because the delicate eyes of decent people must be protected from them. To find them, you’ll usually have to go to the Internet (and thank God for Amazon and Print on Demand technology). Even so, some of the series seem to have fallen on hard times. The cover art on the latter-day Casca novels is cartoonish and hard to look at. Some of the more daring works have been suppressed, but that’s for another post.

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Others become popular, then fade into relative obscurity, only to be rediscovered by a new generation of readers later. The works of Edgar Rice Burroughs are among these. At times in the past his books were all over the shelves. At other times you were hard-pressed to find them. These books are among my perennial favorites. Enough so that I collect them. They have been around for a long, long time, and while they may wane in popularity at times, there is always a group of ERB fanatics in the background. Like many towering figures of the past, he is often denounced today, if he is mentioned at all. What was natural in his own time is now sexist, racist, and every other kind of –ist that offends the pseudo-enlightened of our time.

tarzanIf you’re like most people, the name Edgar Rice Burroughs won’t sound familiar. However, if you’re like most people, you’re very familiar with his work. ERB created the iconic Tarzan of the Apes character that simply refuses to die. Tarzan has been adapted to other media relentlessly over the last century, but none have ever matched the quality of the books. The 24 books of the Tarzan series would have been quite an achievement if he had stopped there, but he wrote dozens more in several different series as well as some stand-alone works.

The best known of these other series is the 11-book “John Carter of john-carter-of-mars-frazzettaMars” series. If that sounds familiar, it’s because of the ill-fated 2012 movie titled simply “John Carter”. The movie was made for the 100th anniversary of the 1912 story “A Princess of Mars”. The movie itself is good and faithful to Burroughs’s vision, but ineptly promoted. The inexplicable decision was made to change the original title, which let the reader know exactly what to expect, to “John Carter”, which sounded like it might be about an accountant. Other brilliant ideas included movie posters which were pure black with nothing other than the unexplained letters “JCM” on them.

If you can put yourself into the mindset of an early 20th Century reader, the books still hold up pretty well.

Book-carsonofnvenusAnother series is the “Carson of Venus” series. A 5-book series about an interplanetary Wrong Way Corrigan. The “Pellucidar” series is one of the earliest of the “hollow Earth” tales. The “Caspak” series gives us “lost world” stories, as in “Oh, my god! There’s dinosaurs here!” The “Moon Maid” series is pretty much what it sounds like. The “Mucker” series is straight up Westerns. There are jungle stories, historical novels, and other assorted odds and ends. These are fast and fun reads. None of them are long. Many are less than 200 pages. Even though they are slim books, I always felt like I got 500 pages worth of action and adventure. Some people have disparaged ERBs books as “brain candy”. Screw ‘em, candy is delicious. If you prefer for men to be men, women to be women, villains to be villains, and savages to be savages, you will probably like these books.

Why I Don’t Love Star Trek Anymore

I will love Star Trek no more, forever. It really pains me to say that. Like so many others I’ve spent ridiculous amounts of time parked in front of my television set watching Jim, Jean-Luc, and the others keep the Federation safe from tyranny. Unfortunately, if one grows and matures as he ages, the day comes when you realize that you’ve become part of the tyranny.

I can forgive the original series for its child-like naivety because it was a product of 1960s culture. But as the years went on and series followed series things didn’t change much. Even 90 some odd years beyond the Jim, Spock, and Bones era not only was 1960s liberalism still around, it had saved the Federation countless times and eventually was in the process of saving the galaxy. For those of us who are amazed that the country survived the 60s and 70s, it is a monumental gaffe that shatters our ability to suspend disbelief.

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Once you’ve become aware of the immortal nature of 60s-style liberalism you begin to notice things about all of the various series. The Federation is allowed to take no action that might impact another culture, even if that action is necessary to promote the interests of the Federation or save someone’s life. Even oppressive and genocidal regimes were sacrosanct under the Prime Directive. In fact, most of the best stories required the characters to violate the Prime Directive. I don’t know about you, but to me this seems to devalue not only human life, but the lives of other sentient beings as well.

Then there are the not-too-subtle digs at some of the groups that I belong to. I find it too much of a coincidence that the uber-baddies of the galaxy are the Borg. Awesome villains to be sure and narrow-minded above and beyond the call of evil duty, but they strike a little too close to home for me. For instance, why is that they are all white? Why is that even when dark-skinned races are assimilated they still turn white? How come the evil Borg are so concerned with assimilation? Is it just a coincidence that this all-white group of evil-doers runs roughshod over everyone in its pursuit of universal assimilation? Seeing as how many Americans, me included, are frustrated by some immigrants’ refusal to assimilate into mainstream society, I don’t think so. I think this is a backhanded way of pushing the multiculturism agenda.

Rumors are unconfirmed that the Borg was inspired by the Democrat voter base.
Rumors are unconfirmed that the Borg was inspired by the Democrat voter base.

Finally, why is it that the Ferengi get no respect? I know they’re hard to take sometimes, but after four decades of the smarmy, latter-day summer-of-love, pseudo-enlightened assortment of alien races in the Federation, they are a welcome breath of fresh air. In fact, they’ve become my favorite Star Trek species. I think they deserve a break. After all, they’ve been severely punished by Star Trek writers for being the uber-capitalists of the quadrant. For their superlative business and economic skills they have been condemned to be short, scrawny, hideous, and fang-toothed with grotesquely distorted facial features. They’re cowardly and untrustworthy, even with family. I’ve always wondered why the sleazoid race of the galaxy couldn’t be a bunch of extraterrestrial Marxists or Islamofascist-like religious bigots. The poor Ferengi are even gratuitously sexist and keep their women naked all the time. (OK, so they allowed them one good quality.)

I stand by my original point. If you’ve ever listened to a liberal talk about the United States, it all sounds vaguely familiar.

A New Addition to the Virtual Pulp Team

Virtual Pulp is happy to introduce our newest contributor, Don Strickland. Don is a science fiction author (his debut novel, Fringeman, is now linked on our Books page) and formerly the Blue Collar Intellectual.

Hello, my name is D. K. Strickland and I’ve been graciously invited to join Virtual Pulp, so let’s get acquainted.

I’m 54-years-old and currently reside in the Southwest. I’m an aspiring author and have one book in print titled “Fringeman”, available on Amazon, with more on the way. If you have a low opinion of overweening governments and elitist busybodies, you might like it.

While I’m waiting for my literary ship to come in, I have a day job in the mining industry. Despite my hardhat position in life I have a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Microbiology, plus graduate work in both Education and Technical Communication, as well as three teaching credentials. I’ve gone back to blue-collar work because it turns out the pay and benefits are better, and I get more time off.

steppenwolf
I like smokin’ lightnin’; heavy metal thunder…

I’ve been a dedicated rocker my whole life, leaning toward heavy metal. I’ve tried to outgrow this and listen to more appropriate music for my age, but I just can’t. I’m off on a symphonic metal kick right now.

I lean toward science fiction and fantasy for entertainment, but other genres as well. I find so-called literary fiction to be boring, pretentious, and pointless—on a good day.

I’m a lifelong Mopar guy, but appreciate all American Iron.

dieselcharger
This photo fits so well, we just had to use it again.

Moderates describe me as Far Right. Leftists describe me as the Devil. I bear no group ill-will (except for that one that flies planes into buildings and saws the heads off of 5-year-old girls), but neither will I tolerate mindless hostility to any of the various groups of which I’m a member. Now, let’s have some fun.