Disclaimer: The names and locations talked about on this article have been modified to guard the responsible, the highly effective, and the litigious alike, to not point out myself (a being of outstanding innocence and purity of coronary heart). None of this stuff really occurred, John Scalzi most likely isn’t actual, and I used to be at a Violent Femmes live performance the entire time, anyway.

John Dies on the Starting

“I would like you to fly down and are available to a gathering with me,” mentioned the cheerful voice on the opposite line. “The one downside is that it’s a ten:00 AM assembly, and I do know you don’t wish to fly within the evening earlier than.”

“I’m sport,” I mentioned. “I’m ineffective by 10:00 PM, solely good for consuming and snacking and watching Under Deck on Peacock. At 4:00 AM? I’m a golden tiger. E book the flight.”

So it was that I discovered myself again at a Chicago airport at one thing like 4:00 AM, desperately attempting to find a espresso store that opened earlier than 5. I didn’t discover one, however the 24-hour bar was completely satisfied to serve me a rum and coke, which I figured had sufficient caffeine in it, and can be sufficiently watered down, to qualify as a stimulant.

It had been lower than 24 hours since I’d heard information that my pal John had been killed. One story was {that a} Tesla had run him over whereas his motorbike was stopped, ready to make a left flip. One other was {that a} drunken teenager in a clapped-out Kia had run a purple gentle at full velocity and t-boned him into the subsequent world. Regardless, it was carried out — and it had left me feeling overwhelmed and terribly alone.

There’s nothing precisely like the sensation that comes from discovering out that the three-headed rabbit god you’ve been sacrificing chickens to this complete time was only a hallucination from the leaky fuel line behind your toaster, however John’s dying hit me sort of like that. The lies you inform your self while you determine to trip a motorbike despite the warnings out of your mom, your youngsters, your physician, and each third fool you run into commerce closely on their very own type of primitive religiosity, in any case: in case you carry out the ritual accurately, put on the proper jacket, tie on the proper boots, strap in the proper helmet, and promise to maintain the rubber aspect down, then you may trip a motorbike as quick as you need (however by no means in a rush) and also you’ll get to the place you’re going in a single piece. That’s the deal. That’s at all times been the deal.

And John? John was the man who at all times made positive your chin strap was tight and your tires had air in ‘em.

Hell, John, I’m unsure if John ever even favored me — however, as is the humorous method of issues, he was at all times there for me and for everybody else who wanted him. At 2:00 AM, on the aspect of a rustic highway two hours from dwelling with a busted motorbike within the ditch? John was the man you’d name. However now John is useless. He did all the things proper, however he’s nonetheless useless, and perhaps the rituals and the lies we inform ourselves to maintain driving are all bullshit, in any case.

It was at about this level that I started to marvel what kind of assembly I used to be about to stroll into.

The three-headed rabbit god I’ve been sacrificing chickens to so I don’t die on a motorbike. Picture generated through Craiyon AI.

I used to be flying out on the whim of my pal, Mark, who isn’t really named Mark. Not Mark rides a Triumph Bonneville. An actual one — not a type of 2001-up revivalist offers. “Costume up,” Not Mark had mentioned. “Jacket AND pants.”

I confirmed up with a light-weight linen jacket, properly fitted, with navy gown pants, blue denim shirt, and woven leather-based Olukai slip-ons. I felt good in regards to the outfit, too — till Southwest’s serving wench spilled the tea on me. Actually. Sizzling tea. From an uncovered container. Throughout my linen coat and one other girl in a white Puma hoodie. “Oops! I believed that was lined,” she mentioned, shuffling again to the entrance of the airplane with out apology.

After it grew to become clear that she wasn’t coming again, I pressed the service button. One of many different flight attendants took our jackets and absconded to the again of the airplane with membership soda and moist naps and miraculously undid the injury, however my new pal and I visibly sneered at any time when the unique one walked by.

My life has turn into comparatively simple, of late, and this expertise was sufficient for me to declare to my Lyft driver that I’d had a horrible flight, who dutifully dropped me off on the deal with Not Mark had given me, and — oh, you’ve got to be f**king kidding me.

Within the Stomach of the Assume Tank

As I arrived within the foyer of The Conservative Assume Tank (a constructing lower than ten years outdated, however constructed to take a look at least 100), I used to be ushered up the steps and right into a convention room, the assembly already underway. There have been plenty of darkish blue blazers (I had made the proper alternative with the linen).

It’s value noting, at this level, that the politics of local weather change and cleantech and electrical automobiles have made for some fairly unusual bedfellows not too long ago, so I most likely shouldn’t have been stunned to search out myself seated at a heavy desk, contained in the granite partitions of a well-funded conservative suppose tank, surrounded by numerous, as they known as themselves, “center-right” sorts speaking in regards to the EV revolution, autonomous automobiles, and what the federal government’s function in all that massive, scary, capital-c “Change” that was heading our method is likely to be.

So, OK. I concede: the actual shock shouldn’t have been that I used to be there. The true shock, perhaps, ought to’ve been that — after choking again the urge to scream obscenities within the faces of lobbyists who, on one other day, may need been developing with new and fanciful methods to drive homosexual youngsters to suicide and drive underage women to hold their rapists’ genetically-deficient infants to time period on the threat of their very own well being, future, and sanity — I genuinely agreed with a lot of what this bunch needed to say.

On the subject of public security, for example, one gentleman requested the desk if we’d ever agreed to be part of Elon Musk’s grand self-driving experiment, or if I’d ever clicked “OK” on a Tesla ToS permitting Tesla’s cameras to document my face and site.

I mentioned I hadn’t.

The theme of the dialog turned to questions of knowledge privateness, biometrics, good infrastructure, and public security — all common subjects within the days after Tesla’s Sentry Mode and onboard cameras had been labeled “a privateness violation on wheels” and greater than 100GB of delicate buyer knowledge had been leaked.

The leak itself, whereas overhyped, was vital. It contained “greater than 100,000 names of former and present staff, together with the social safety variety of the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, together with personal e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, salaries of staff, financial institution particulars of shoppers and secret particulars from manufacturing.” It raised the query: How far more was there? And these guys had been asking that query — and plenty of, many extra.

Can we actually belief privately owned robotaxis? Even in case you belief the Autopilot and FSD Teslas, do you belief their house owners? What about their second house owners? Or third? With a number of “self-driving” EVs now approaching — or exceeding! — a whole bunch of hundreds of miles of use, would you wager your life that the automobiles’ house owners have saved the sensors and cameras and brakes and steering and tires and shocks in tip-top form?

Would you wager your youngsters’ lives?

Would my pal John nonetheless be alive if a “good pylon” on the nook he was stopped at might inform the oncoming automobiles to be careful for a stopped motorbike? What if they may have despatched a distant sign to cease the automobiles earlier than they hit the bike, no matter who was on the wheel, be they human or AI or Toonces?

That is what these guys wished to know, and it felt like a surprising show of sanity from — properly, Republicans.

“We contemplate ourselves ‘middle proper,’ identical to the remainder of America,” mentioned one of many extra polished younger males on the desk — a blonde, blue-eyed 20-something who’s photograph might have appeared subsequent to the phrase “Aryan” in a dictionary, if folks nonetheless had dictionaries. “Invoice Clinton, Barack Obama, and even Joe Biden are politically extra conservative than the remainder of the world,” he provided. “Biden even handed legal guidelines to stop labor strikes on railroads — and nobody has been actually pinned down for what occurred after the derailment in Palestine.”

I leaned over to Not Mark, chatting with him for the primary time since I had entered the room. “What the hell is that this?” I whispered. “They’re really making a number of sense.”

“They’re good folks,” mentioned Not Mark, leaning in. “They suppose they’re good folks.”

I smirked. “Don’t all of us?”

The dialog turned to e-mobility, city planning, and what their metropolis would possibly seem like in just a few years’ time. However for a single, exceptionally bizarre remark about “the Environmentalist Faith,” it might have been a dialog recorded on the CleanTechnica water cooler — and that place is about as left-leaning because it will get.

Some phrases that stood out, if just for shock worth:

• There can be fewer automobiles on the highway than there are right now — and that’s a great factor.
• There are too many parking areas, and never sufficient inexperienced areas.
• Folks wish to get round in numerous methods, not simply utilizing automobiles.
• We are able to’t belief that the sensors and security techniques in folks’s privately-owned automobiles are being correctly maintained, that security must be constructed into the infrastructure.
• Security and connectivity needs to be constructed into the roads and buildings.
• Connectivity and entry to the web are important, which is why we have to push to ascertain an information utility.

There have been just a few extra minutes of this wholly cheap line of thought, of conversations about management and setting a normal for not simply the town we had been in, however the state itself, in addition to each different state that was concurrently south of the Mason-Dixon Line and never California.

Listening to all of this sense-making, I started to marvel if these Republicans would possibly really be making sense about different issues, too. Ought to trans women and girls be allowed to set sports activities data and compete for scholarships? I’m definitely not educated or knowledgeable sufficient to know. Ought to minors be prevented from getting gender-affirming surgical procedure till they’re 18? I do know loads of trans folks, however I’ve by no means felt the sort of physique or gender dysmorphia that made me really feel like traumatic surgical procedure and tough hormone therapies can be a greater different. Ought to we hold underage youngsters off of social media? I don’t need my youngsters on social media, however that’s as a result of I don’t need them to be uncovered to airbrushed supermodels and inconceivable requirements of magnificence, and not as a result of I don’t need them uncovered to vital race idea or evolution.

“That’s how they get you,” the little angel on my shoulder mentioned. “They are saying issues that sound sort of OK, and the subsequent factor you realize, you’re speaking about prayer in colleges and banning books and marching within the streets carrying a TIKI model Luau Bamboo Torch (©)!”

I instinctively reached for the hand-cannon I hold in my desk drawer, however I wasn’t at my desk, and my hand brushed awkwardly in opposition to one of many Aryan’s calves. Whether or not he favored it or not, he gave no indication.

I eyed him suspiciously because the Republicans went on, speaking in regards to the rights of the person to their very own knowledge, and the alternatives offered for accountable authorities oversight and regulation on subjects like AI, a self-driving car infrastructure, and particular person knowledge monetization.

All through all of it, I used to be stunned to listen to actual, “humanity first, expertise second, earnings final” type of stuff that appeared, within the second, to be eminently cheap — and under no circumstances one thing I anticipated to listen to from the laissez faire crowd.

I mentioned as a lot, however admitted one thing my stepdad taught me: that labels exist to divide folks, and to create “others,” and others turn into marginalized. I appreciated being seated in a room full of people that appeared thinking about discovering actual options that labored for all folks (behind closed doorways, anyway).

“We’ll work with anybody to do good,” he mentioned, nodding. “And nobody to do dangerous.”

Because the discuss continued, my ideas wandered onto Rachel Spiegelman.

Rachel was a survivor of the German bombing of Warsaw in the beginning of World Struggle II. She was amongst some 500,000 Polish Jews who, having survived the bombings, had been initially concentrated right into a Ghetto, an space roughly one sq. mile. Between July and October of 1942, almost 300,000 of those folks had been deported to focus camps — Treblinka and Chelmno — till solely about 40,000 Jews had been left within the Warsaw Ghetto.

In April of 1943, the Nazis stormed the Warsaw Ghetto, murdering hundreds of Jews. Heroically, they fought again, in a battle that lasted almost three weeks. Practically all of them had been killed — however Rachel was one of many survivors.

From John Scalzi’s “shareware” novel Agent to the Stars:

In pre-Struggle instances, Rachel and her household had been well-to-do professionals; the daughter and granddaughter of physicians, Rachel herself had studied legislation and labored because the workplace supervisor of her husband’s legislation agency. Along with Polish and Yiddish, she spoke German and English, and had even been to America as a baby, to go to relations who had emigrated there. She was a daughter and spouse of privilege, and the autumn from having servants and summer time properties to dwelling six to a room within the ghetto was an extended one.

And but, inasmuch as one can within the circumstances, Rachel thrived. She was tough-minded and wise — and likewise formidable. When the Nazis knowledgeable the ghetto residents that they had been to kind Jewish councils that may oversee housing, sanitation and manufacturing manufacturing, she forbade any member of her household from becoming a member of the councils, declaring that those that labored with the Germans had been main the remainder to the slaughter. When her husband disobeyed her and served on a council, Rachel threw him out of the room that they shared with Rachel’s mother and father, her brother, and her brother’s spouse.

From April till the start of August, Rachel slaved within the camp; on August third, it was determined that she was now not wanted. She was despatched a mile up the highway to Treblinka II, the place the “bathhouses” had been. These bathhouses had been related to very large diesel engines that pumped in carbon monoxide — lethal, however not very environment friendly. It sometimes took almost a half hour earlier than the a whole bunch crammed contained in the “bathhouses” died. It was an extended and terrifying dying, and between 700,000 and 900,000 folks died that method, in that camp.

On August third, nonetheless, there have been some stunning deaths at Treblinka II; particularly, an SS officer and a number of other guards. They had been killed by among the Jews who labored on the camp, performing the executions, excavating the corpses for gold enamel and different valuables, and transporting the our bodies to mass graves. The Jews selected that day to aim a revolt, and whereas it was not profitable, over 200 Jews escaped the camp throughout the chaos. Rachel was certainly one of them. Many of the escapees had been ultimately recaptured or killed. Rachel was not. Rachel went north, ultimately discovering passage to Sweden. After the conflict ended, she emigrated from there to america.

If it had ended there, Rachel’s life and survival by the Nazi Holocaust would have been outstanding sufficient, but it surely didn’t. She went on to work in Selma, Alabama, as a lawyer, representing black victims of police violence within the wake of the civil rights protests of the Nineteen Sixties — themselves a response to many years of Jim Crow legal guidelines. Simply earlier than she died in 1975, she advised TIME journal, “I really feel the work I’ve carried out was the work I used to be destined to do. I do know what it’s to lose my rights and to be advised that I’ve no proper to exist, to see my household, my associates and my humanity stripped away from me. These are onerous recollections, couched in sorrow and anger. However I additionally know what it’s to see others start to realize their rights and their humanity, to be advised, sure, you’re our brothers and sisters. Come be a part of us on the household desk, and be welcome. My work, although such a small half of a bigger complete, has helped to make this a actuality. It makes these onerous recollections slightly simpler to bear, as a result of these recollections – they’re superb.”

If you happen to’re impressed to study extra about Rachel Spiegelman and her superhuman efforts to champion the rights of marginalized “others,” don’t hassle trying in Wikipedia. Rachel is a fictional character created by creator John Scalzi. Scalzi appears to concentrate on gentle, enjoyable, sci-fi tales that play with TV tropes and make for fabulous airport reads. Spiegelman, although, is a bit totally different from Scalzi’s Star Trek-inspired Pink Shirts or sympathetic Godzilla, who will get handled like an unique endangered species. Rachel’s life story, in the meantime, is heavy, darkish, and feels all too actual — regardless of being fictional.

Rachel Spiegelman, then, isn’t fairly the hero we deserve. However absolutely she’s a hero that’s wanted now, as a lot as ever.

I snapped again. The discuss within the room had, by now, turned to folks not eager to work and the homelessness “disaster,” and the way it could possibly be “fought” by eliminating authorities handouts and applications that “give folks fish as a substitute of instructing them fish.”

“Folks turn into marginalized once they now not see themselves as a part of the better good,” mentioned — let’s go along with “Randy.”

I considered telling Not Randy that the individuals who’d died on the Path of Tears would possibly disagree with calling Manifest Future part of the better good, and that piling legalistic horrors onto confused youngsters praying that it does, certainly, “get higher,” won’t be both — however thought higher of it. It wasn’t time to burn the place down.

Not till I had a transparent run on the exits, anyway.

Apart from, on my good days, I like to inform myself that I’m a journalist, and journalism is a ticket to a really unique present. If you happen to’re ok and keep it up lengthy sufficient and also you make the proper associates and present up on the proper conferences (in the proper blazer), that present will provide you with an opportunity to see the information occur proper in entrance of you, whereas everybody else watches helplessly from the well-worn dents of their sofas. It’s thrilling, but it surely doesn’t at all times pay the payments (simply ask BuzzFeed).

This discuss round this desk on this present day, on this blazer — it appeared like information, however I couldn’t inform if it was excellent news or dangerous information. Or, frankly, if I ought to assist these folks or flip the desk and storm out, identify names, and do my damndest to ensure these folks by no means handed a legislation or received an election once more.

It weighed on me. Was this what it was prefer to work with the Germans? “We’d like the three legs of the stool,” mentioned one of many males on the desk, simply on the opposite aspect of the Aryan man. “We’d like the proper, the left, and the expertise. That’s the one method this works.”

I had my doubts, however nodded anyway. My time was up. We shook palms, traded enterprise playing cards (I’ve a QR code on my telephone as a substitute of paper playing cards — playing cards are dangerous luck), and was on my method.

Debrief

“What did you suppose?” requested Not Mark.

“It was surprisingly wise,” I mentioned.

“I wished you to go in chilly,” he mentioned. “Throw you into the deep finish and see what you consider what they’re saying. I believe there’s a chance there.”

There’s. There’s, in actual fact, an actual probability {that a} metropolis like Austin, with its progressive, tech-forward inhabitants, might do one thing good. Charlotte, Atlanta, Tucson, too. There’s no scarcity of alternatives to get this proper, and get “the three legs of the stool” to work collectively and ship a public coverage initiative that’s not simply good, however which locations the human expertise and high quality of life and sustainability on the forefront.

“Not sustainability. They don’t like that,” mentioned Not Mark. “Say, ‘effectivity.’ It’s about decreasing prices, in a way, and about management, too, however effectivity saves cash. It’s good for everybody.”

Positive it’s — and there’s no method this might go pear-shaped both and switch into the worst elements of 1984, The Return of the Archons, and The Terminator .

“All of the extra cause to remain concerned. To make it possible for doesn’t occur.”

I hope he’s proper.

Unique content material from CleanTechnica (who remind you to pour one out for the homies who may need been saved if we’d began speaking about this 5 years in the past).

Featured picture by Bundeswehr-Fotos (CC BY 2.0 license)

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