Talking to the Ground

Posted on November 12, 2018 by smellincoffee

Talking to the Ground: One Family’s Journey on Horseback Across the Sacred Land of the Navajo
© 1995 Douglas Preston
284 pages

“How does the trail look?” Christine asked.
“Ask me at the bottom,”  I said, feeling a certain queasiness in my stomach. There was no turning back; we had to get to the water, and the water was down there, at the base of Hoskinninni Mesa. There was a short silence.
“You want to rest longer?” Frank asked.
Christine jerked her lead rope knot-free and pulled her horse around.
“Hell no,” she said, “Let’s get this over with.”
I thought, I’m marrying a woman who has far more courage than I do.

p. 75

Last year I read Douglas Preston’s excellent Cities of Gold, his re-tracing the steps of Spanish explorers of North America, complete with horses and occasional disasters. While staying in Flagstaff in April this year, I discovered a sequel to that work, Talking to the Ground. Here, Preston, his fiance, and his soon-to-be- stepdaughter travel across Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico as they follow a journey from Navajo legend, riding in the shadow of four sacred mountains.  If Cities of Gold mixed  horse travel and history, Talking to the Ground does the same for travel and mythology. All of the locales Preston and his family ride to are introduced in the creation myth of the Navajo, in which a being called Monster Slayer had to rid the world of horrific monsters born of a prolonged war between the sexes; the  geologic formations are considered the remains of the monsters, and of the monster slayer and his sibling.

Although Preston, his wife, and their daughter Selene do not encounter nearly as much peril and problems as Preston did on his previous trip,  this is no easy lope. As before, Preston and his fellow riders carry everything necessary with them, and plan their trip  with a strict eye as to where they can find water.   There were no telephones,  no ranger stations, no safety net:  if horses fell attempting to navigate down a hillside, or the family was caught by surprise by hail or dust storms,  they were on their own.  Perhaps because Preston still carried his experience from the previous trip, the family encounters few troubles beyond days in which water is far too scarce for their and their horses’s liking; they often journey in rain, but  not a horse escapes (a constant problem in Cities of Gold) or is injured.     The meat of this book is less travel misadventures than Preston’s retelling of stories from Navajo mythology and history, offered both as what he knows, and as he receives it while visiting with people — Navajo families and individuals eking out a living for themselves  still — along the way. Everyone is surprised to encounter this family traveling along  horseback, as most tourists arrive by car and roar off as quickly as they arrive.

A common theme of the conversations is how strongly the Navajo feel themselves connected to their land — sustained by it, not just from the food it produces with their care but by its very existence. They explain its importance to Preston as like the Bible or the Constitution: the land is the bedrock of te Navajo experience. Without it, they have no life, no identity. The horrifying misery of the Long Walk is recounted here, an episode of early foreign policy blundering as the American government decided to solve the problem of New Mexican-Navajo inter-raiding by clearing out the Navajo and forcing them to march across the land and make a new life for themselves in a barren place with only marginal supplies, creating an effective concentration camp in the wilderness  with conditions so gruesome that the government did the unthinkable and admitted the mistake. Over and over again the Navajo muse that the mysterious collapse of another people — the Anasazi — may about to repeat itself as heedless development and consumption play havoc with natural cycles and hasten collapse.

While this  horse journey across the Southwest didn’t have nearly the same appeal for me as Cities of Gold, it was nontheless enjoyable, and complements House of Rain, another tour in pursuit of the Anasazi, very well.

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Triumph!

Posted on November 11, 2018 by smellincoffee

Considering I’ve only made it to the end of NaNoWriMo twice before, I’m enormously  pleased to have reached the goal even before the two-week mark this year. While my story isn’t finished, I’m in the final act of it and will continue advancing it for the rest of the month — though not at the same pace! For now it’s time to relish the win, and do a little of the reading I’ve been neglecting these last two weeks!

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Remembrance Day

Posted on November 11, 2018 by smellincoffee

On this date one hundred years ago, western civilization stopped the greatest bloodletting ever witnessed in Europe. Although the Great War is often dismissed as a mere prologue to World War 2, it deserves special place in the western memory, for it was there  that future historians may begin their postmortem when western civilization’s decline and fall is written. The  millions of young men who perished fighting one another  cast a long shadow, and the evils this war unbottled have never been shut up again. The war was horrific beyond imagining.  In the United States the date has been taken over by “Veteran’s Day”.  yet another holiday for honoring the modern god of the state.  It should have remained Armistice Day, and better yet Remembrance Day, for its memory should haunt us. It should give us all pause in our every dealing with other nations.  
In remembrance, I offer a song which I have listened to every November 11th since I first encountered it, as a reminder 

Well how do you do young Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I’ve been walking all day and I’m nearly done
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in nineteen sixteen
Well I hope you died well. and I hope you died clean — 
Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fifes lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
And did the band play the last post and chorus? Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?
Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some faithful heart, is your memory enshrined?
And though you died back in nineteen sixteen — 
In some faithful heart are you forever nineteen?
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed  forever behind a glass frame
In an old photograph.  torn, battered, and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they sound the fifes lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
And did the band play the last post and chorus? Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?
Well the sun now it shines on the green fields of France
There’s a warm summer breeze, it makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds  — 
There’s no gas no barbed wire, there’s no gun firing now
But here in this graveyard it’s still no man’s land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fifes lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down?
And did the band play the last post and chorus? Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?
Ah, young Willie McBride,  I can’t help wonder why — 
Do those that lie here know why did they die?
And did they believe when they answered the call…
Did they really believe that this war would end war?
Well the sorrow,  the suffering, the glory, the pain — 
The killing,  the dying, it  was all done in vain
For young Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

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Great Rulers of the African Past

Posted on November 9, 2018 by smellincoffee

Great Rulers of the African Past
120 pages
© 1965 Lavinia Dobler and William Brown

Most of African history is a complete unknown for me; what few kings I can name outside of Egypt and Carthage are familiar to me only through the Civilization series, namely Shaka and Mansa Musa.  While in the future I would like to do a study series and get to know the cradle of humanity better,  this brightly-illustrated book will serve a taste.  It is a history of five men — three Muslim, one Christian, one whatever-makes-you-stop-bothering-me — who created legacies for themselves, either by conquering far and wide or by  relentlessly attempting to connect to the outside world and enrich themselves through trade and courting scholars and technicians.  Three of these lives unfold in northwest Africa, along the Senegal and Niger rivers;   one is set close by, near Lake Chad; and one is alone in being set in the Congo.  This book’s size and style indicate it was intended for younger readers, say perhaps middle schoolers,  and there are explanations of important places and people which surface, like Mecca — which two kings here make pilgrimages to. 

The men chronicled are:

  • Mansa Musa of Mali,  a pious and highly admired king who journeyed to Mecca;
  • Sunni Ali Ber,   forger of the Songhai Empire, who built an empire nearly the size of Western Europe, but disappeared abruptly on campaign
  • Askia Muhammad, general of the armies to Ali Ber’s successor-son,  whose political cluelessness so angered his Muslim subjects that they encouraged Muhammad to seize the throne
  • Affonso I, a young prince of Congo who converted to Christianity after Portugal initiated first contact between Europe and southern Africa; he  was alone in his family in taking the new religion seriously
  • Idris Alaoma, another king who died in battle, but not before he discovered gunpowder weapons in Egypt and arranged to have some brought home
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Troubleshooting Your PC for Dummies

Posted on November 9, 2018 by smellincoffee

As soon as I opened this package  I knew I’d goofed. “Now Updated to Support Vista!”?    …well, it’s by the same author as the version I thought I was buying, and I do in fact have a Vista machine  which I’ve refused to let die because it can play games that simply don’t play nice with Windows 10.  Even if the specific steps are different, the  general steps may still apply today. So I read it, and…well, I’ll have to be more careful about buying used books in the future.  Troubleshooting Your PC for Dummies, 3rd edition, is definitely a intro computer users’ guide; while it assumes users are generally familiar with using Windows,  it doesn’t get into the kind of specifics that the most recent edition does.

The above shot is from the table of contents for Troubleshooting and Maintaining Your PC All in One For Dummies, 3rd Edition, not Troubleshooting Your PC for Dummies, 3rd Edition  As you can see, it’s a methodical walk-through of everything that happens during the startup sequence,  (I assume)  offers information on how to figure out if it’s bad RAM or a failing power supply or whatever.    The similarly titled but drastically book I’ve just read was far more basic,  explaining what common errors meant,  reviewing the proper method of uninstalling programs (instead of just deleting their files), running antivirus and system restores ,  guiding readers  to their Control Panel — helpful to beginners who  have never explored  beyond the desktop and their documents folders. 
Although I still want to add a guide like this to my tech resource library, it won’t be this one, given the relatively shallow level of information and the  constant attempts at humor which must have been a for Dummies specification. What’s worse, some of the information is…not quite right. For instance, the author tells readers that if the User Account Control window pops up, they’re probably in the middle of something they shouldn’t be doing. As someone who frequently customizes games — adding clothing and objects to The Sims, say, or custom maps to Civilization — the UAC  was a chronic nuisance, refusing to allow even my admin account to unpack files from compressed folders into the Program Files directory, even after I authorized it.   I wound up creating a “landing” folder in a directory UAC wasn’t so touchy about, unpacking items there, then  moving them from the landing to their intended directory (with UAC demanding I confirm the action, not to  be ignored).   There’s probably a way to turn UAC off, but I wouldn’t want to disable Windows calling foul on any actual intrusions.   In sound troubleshooting, the author suggests a system restore before users have even made sure that a volume problem isn’t just limited to one file, or one program. 

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Fear, bikes, and NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 5, 2018 by smellincoffee

Happy Monday! (Or Monday evening, depending on where you are…)

My NaNoWriMo is off to a promising start, as I’ve been logging just over 4,000 words per day, well over the 1667 minimum average requirement.   That is completely  unprecedented for me; usually I have a strong first couple of days, and two weeks in I’m struggling and just typing stream of consciousness garbage to make any wordcount headway at all.    I think the amount of time the particulars of this story have been rattling around in my head has helped grease the runners, so to speak, and I’m going to ride this lead as far as I can.  Having a five-point overview with a partial sketch of the narrative also helps.   Essentially I have an ensemble group of four factions (a fifth will be introduced at the climax) and am visiting each faction-figure once in turn,  a la Harry Turtledove.  I’m 1.5 “turns” in.

Last week I finished a couple of books that I won’t be dwelling on in a full review. I should at least mention them, however. The first, Fear, is a history of the first year of the Trump administration, or rather a review of some of the more alarming episodes of that period like the twitter war with the Kim cult, the creation of an economic policy cut from 18th century mercantilist playbooks, and the ongoing chaos of interior organization.   Like Fire and Fury this is less an expose than a recap, as we’ve all seen this unfold in public and even Trump supporters I know aren’t sure how to make sense of everything that comes out of DC these days.

The second book I finished in the week was Bikeonomics, a bit of bike advocacy which hails bicycles’ salulatory effect on health, the urban environment, and the bottom line . Unfortunately, I’ve encountered all that before through On Bikes,  so it was a bit of preaching to the choir for me.

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The Bicycle Diaries

Posted on November 3, 2018 by smellincoffee

The Bicycle Diaries: My 21,000 Mile Ride for the Climate
© 2014 David Kroodsma
428 pages

The Bicycle Diaries combines travel and climate-change advocacy, both literally as a trip and throughout the book. As Kroodsma makes his way through Mexico, Central America, and the mountainous roads of South America,  he talks to locals, from retired presidents to impoverished farmers, about the ways their landscape is changing and discusses with them the ways climate change will further alter their homes, health, and livelihood.   The book is thus a tour of these regions by bike and a survey of the various ways climate will affect the future, as seemingly every place he visits is imperiled either by development or by climactic alteration.

 Although Peruvian villagers aren’t exactly a primary source of problematic emissions,  developing countries and their poor are the most at risk to future changes,  and Kroodsma wanted to increase awareness on all fronts – communicating what he knew to people young and old as he cycled, learning from his discussions with people about their experiences.  This a tale with great appeal, from the travel descriptions of varied landscapes (the beautiful Andes, salt flats the size of New Jersey, stupefyingly rich forests,  to the candid interactions with people from the poor and marginalized to the wealthy and powerful.   Kroodsma is continually amazed by the hospitality of strangers over the course of the year, and challenged by the fact that many people seem happy with their lives despite having so little.  The spread of the internet into very remote places was also a pleasing surprise, as it meant more opportunities at less expense.   The virtue of bicycles comes up quite often, as you might imagine — from their travel merits (making it easier for Kroodsma to interact with people),  to their environmental impact, to their role in making cities more livable places.

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NaNoWriMo 2019

Posted on November 1, 2018 by smellincoffee

It’s November first, and that means it’s National Novel Writing Month!   Every November for the last nineteen years, hundreds of thousands of people across the world devote themselves to the goal of writing a 50,00 page story.   I did this successfully in 2013 and 2014,  though in the years that followed I’ve either failed or not started. This year I’m more prepared than I’ve ever been, with a story based on a scenario I designed for Heroes of Might and Magic II a…long time ago. We’re talking pre-9/11 here.  I have an outline, a map, a dramatic climax, a horrifying plot twist….all I lack is an ending.  One bridge at a time, though.   Here’s the plot synopsis I posted on NaNoWriMO’s forums:

“A storm is brewing over the twisted mountains of Akkadia. In the north, the merchant-prince Ali has returned to find his clan’s camps destroyed, his farms and mills burned, and his young family  dead. There are no survivors to expose who has done this, but Ali knows only man powerful and treacherous enough to attack the Brotherhood:  Sargon. 

To the far southwest, separated from the land by a great ocean, an ancient wizard  has been awakened from his sleep to learn that his daughter was kidnapped. Though once an advisor to the ruler of men, the tragically slain and long-mourned-over Khan , the wizard retreated to his frozen island kingdom after a great war decades ago,  despairing of mankind, and has long left the people of the mainland in peace, however much they fear his power.  But now they have taken his daughter, envying her power and beauty, and they must pay. Who could it be?   Rumor has it that one king on the mainland is anxious for an heir: the sonless Sargon.   In the southeast, the murder of the king nearly destroyed the small kingdom of Okan,  as brothers fought against one another to claim the crown. Now, the two survivors look with bitterness to the north, and prepare to avenge their dead father — for the man whose hands were red with blood wore the ring of that jealous northern neighbor…Sargon. 

Decades ago, Sargon left his homeland and tried to find adventure in the north. He found a land riven in war against darkness, squabbling states  beset  by an army of foul beasts and  sinister magic that would command even the dead. The war left much of the land wasted and barren, and many quit it in despair. But Sargon was ambitious and resilient, and from the ruins he built an empire for himself, his dominion limited only by the lifeless mountains in the north, the cursed swamps to the south, and the dragon-guarded ocean to the west. He has never known complete peace, but a lifetime of war has made Sargon its master. From his castle in the barrens, Sargon reigns happy — and unsuspecting.  

Might, guile, and magic are soon to be arrayed against the warlord, but there are darker storms a-brewing, and evil waiting to be waked. “

As hinted from some of the names, I’m drawing on Earth’s history and landscapes for inspiration,  using a range from the Mesopotamia to the Indus  for the areas mentioned in the story.  (I also recently read The Prince in part to give me ideas for Sargon’s ruthless  performance as a ruler.) Just for laughs, here’s a couple of screenshots from Heroes of Might and Magic 2. These aren’t my own, and they aren’t from my scenario which was on a computer long lost to me. (It disappeared into a storage shed long before I had any inkling that data could be recovered…)   The story is inspired only by the plot of my scenario, not by game mechanics. It’s been so long since I played HoMM2 I can’t even remember most of the  units, beyond the usual suspects of dragons, genies, and sword-wielding skeletons.

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Top Ten Trek Episodes for Halloween

Posted on October 30, 2018 by smellincoffee

Star Trek and its iterations have produced many kinds of shows — adventures, romances, mysteries, action thrillers, spy dramas — but  its horror episodes are particularly memorable. Since we’re nearing Halloween, I thought it would be fun to share some the more appropriate episodes.  This isn’t an objective list compiled from a survey; there are just episodes I remember as being creepy or appropriate, and naturally there’s a bias toward Deep Space Nine given that it’s my favorite.

“Catspaw“, TOS (02×07)
Although I don’t find “Catspaw” particularly scary,  it’s gotta be here considering that it was deliberately filmed for and aired on  Halloween.  After losing contact with a landing party, Kirk and his senior staff beam down to find a fog-covered arena of mystery, apparitions of witches  warning them away in a threatening chant, and a gloomy gothic castle shrouded in the mist.    Inside the castle, their lost landing party waits for them in a dungeon, under the control of a malicious “wizard”.

“Macrocosm“, ST-VOY (03×12)
Captain Janeway and Neelix return to a Voyager which is strangely empty, except for occasional noises deep in the interior, and see evidence that the crew left their stations abruptly.  But there is something else on the ship that’s alive…

“Night Terrors“, ST-TNG (04×17)
The Enterprise-D is caught in a spatial anomaly that denies the crew the ability to really sleep. As they sink into hallucinations and violence,   Deanna Troi — who keeps hearing the voice within her head intone “EYES IN THE DARK, ONE MOON CIRCLING” — tries to find an answer to what is happening. A nearby ship adrift, filled with the bodies of a crew that murdered itself, is an ominous reminder of what will happen if she doesn’t.

“Whispers“, ST-DS9 (02×14)
“Whispers opens with Miles O’Brien escaping from…Deep Space Nine, where his friends and coworkers have inexplicably begun treating him like an enemy in disguise.  One of the many “abuse O’Brien” episodes of DS9,  viewers witness poor Miles suffering cold distrust from first both his wife and his command, and then everyone — even children.  After using his engineering know-how and knowledge of the station’s innards to escape, he looks to Starfleet Command for reprieve. In a related episode, “The Assignment“, Mile’s wife is possessed by a malevolent alien who wishes to attack Bajor…and if the chief doesn’t assist the creature, it will kill his wife and daughter.

“Distant Voices“, ST-DS9 (03×18)
Shortly after being physically attacked by an alien in his lab,  Dr. Julian Bashir wakes up to a seemingly abandoned and crippled station. What’s more, he’s aging — rapidly, and hears faint voices all around him. When he finally finds a few scattered members of the crew,  they’re acting  uncharacteristically. When Bashir’s failing faculties seem to align with the crew being killed by a monstrous assassin, the doctor realizes he is fighting for his sanity within his own head.

“One“/“Doctor’s Orders”  ST-VOY/ST-ENT (04×25 | 03×16)
An effective enough story that it was recycled between shows, “One” features Voyager entering an area of space dangerous to most of the life on the ship.  Seven of Nine and the Emergency Medical Hologram are immune to the effect, but everyone else must be put into medical stasis.  At first, matters go smoothly…but then the EMH is compromised, and Seven is left alone to battle both technical problems and the creeping terror of being alone for weeks on end. ENT re-used the story, but Seven’s status as someone still establishing her own identity apart from the Borg collective made the original  far more compelling, with Borg hallucinations driving Seven’s panic. The filming of “One” used a lot of perspective shots that made it look like Seven was being followed or stalked.

“The Haunting of Deck Twelve“, ST-VOY (06×25)
Voyager, for reasons undeclared to the viewer, is shutting down all engines and drifting through a nebula more mysterious than normal.  While Starfleet’s finest will be at their stations during the darkness, monitoring something Very Important, Neelix is assigned to take care of four children whom Voyager rescued. To entertain them, he tells them a “ghost story” about why it’s important that the ship is powered down and at full alert, which mixes fact and fantasy and keeps the kids and viewers alike spellbound. There are comedic elements as well, because one of the children is older and keeps asking about the plot holes.

“Schisms”, ST-TNG (06×05)
The Enterprise crew is overtaken by creeping paranoia, flashes of memory from a terrible place, and feelings of being out-of-time. When Crusher and Troi begin comparing notes,  they realize there are common points of reference, and begin to suspect that the crew are being abducted in their sleep.

“Empok Nor“, ST-DS9 (05×24)
A sudden crisis aboard Deep Space Nine forces a small team to raid an abandoned Cardassian outpost for supplies. Because the outpost is booby-trapped,  mysterious Cardassian exile Garak comes along to watch for and disable any traps.  But the station isn’t quite abandoned, and as members of the team begin to be murdered one by one, a psychotropic toxin turns friends against one another. The experience is harrowing enough that a season later, a survivor’s behavior is influenced by it while in another tense situation.

1. “Frame of Mind“,  ST-TNG (06×21). Commander Riker wakes up in an  asylum, accused of having murdered a man. He has no memory of the event, and everyone treats him like he is insane. What’s more….he is.    What Riker experiences and the reality around him constantly conflict, and even when members of the Enterprise crew show up to check on him, they prove only to be part of the delusion. The episode is a complete mindscrew,   keeping the viewer and Riker completely unsettled.   “Frame of Mind” is the reason I made this list to begin with, and I went ahead and made it number one before anything else.

Back in the early 2000s, a guy named DarkMateria did three remix songs, using TNG clips and music — one for Picard, one for Worf, and one for “Frame of Mind”. I’m including a fan-made vid above using the music.

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The Prince

Posted on October 30, 2018 by smellincoffee

The Prince
© 1532 Niccolo Machiavelli
100 pages

Italy, circa 1500, was a rough neighborhood. Divided between powerful city-centered states and frequently threatened by outside empires,  few rulers could rest on their laurels and enjoy a prolonged peace. Even if someone outside didn’t want to take over, someone inside might want to effect a little regime change.  In such an environment, Nichola Machiavelli chose to present his newly-acclaimed ruler with a gift of advice. The Prince is a brief, grimly realistic review of how states work and how best to manipulate them, drawing on Italian or Mediterranean  history for case studies.

I’ve grown up to associate the term Machiavellian with sinister calculation, usually of the wheels-within-wheels kind, and especially with cold-blooded calculation that doesn’t hesitate to burn bridges, step on toes, and secure pointy knives in the back of friends who have outlived their use.  The Prince doesn’t quite do that reputation justice,  but it’s easy to see where it lies.   Most of the beginning advice is analytical, as Machiavelli reviews different types of states and ways to rise to power —   He argues that a feudal state like France is relatively easy to compromise and invade, but nearly impossible to consolidate because of the heavy local  basis of government.. An autocratic regime, on the other hand, where the weight of the state is on the ruler’s shoulders and not supported or drawn from civil society, is harder to invade  because of the central power but relatively easy to subdue thereafter.   He appraises different sources of effective defense, from the best (a native, professional army) to the worst (foreign auxiliaries).   It’s later on, though, that things get….interesting.

Machiavelli argues that morality has little place in politics;  politics is about what is rather than what should be. He does not equivocate: men are wicked. You cannot account on their affection, because it evaporates quickly. You cannot count on loyalty, because  everyone looks instinctively to their own interest  in the pursuit of power and wealth.   It is better, then, to be feared rather than loved — so long as one is not hated.   Rulers should make and break their word with the same ease of a mechanic breaking down equipment to replace or mend its parts.  This should not done flippantly or obviously — it’s always important to maintain the appearance of virtue if not the substance of it —  but a prince is judged by his results and nothing else.  The best way for a prince to solidify his power,  in fact, is for him to make himself indispensable, a man whose fall would cause more trouble  than his continuing in office.  In weighing the virtues of generosity and parsimony,  Machiavelli concludes that it is far better for a prince to be faulted for stinginess than liberality:  recipients of gifts are never as grateful as they should be, and  the giving of gifts and favors only spurs resentment among those who do not benefit,  induces greater expectations for future, more fulsome giving, and empties the state’s coffers. In a worst case scenario, the liberally-giving prince can earn the hatred of the people by taxing them to give them gifts they do not regard as favors but rather as entitlements. All  this advice is not intuitive: while one might expect advice to a dictator to urge disarming the rabble so they don’t protest, Machiavelli instead maintains that keeping the population armed is a wiser choice. A ruler who disarms his subjects broadcasts his distrust of the people, and so cultivates their contempt. The strength of the ruler lays in his ability to defend against threats, and an armed populace is the best means of doing so.

The Prince has all kinds of related advice in it, from choosing wise-but-not-too-wise counsel, to squelching conspiracies. Some of the advice has modern application which anyone would applaud, like the avoidance of  sycophants and foreign auxiliaries (how much money did DC waste in Afghanistan trying to create a native security force?).  Some of this is material which I think we all suspect but rarely want to admit — like the necessity for leaders to appear decisive and strong even if they are internally conflicted.  That can easily lead us into folly if leaders focus too much on appearances rather than reality, but it is possible to change one’s mind in light of growing evidence and still appear decisive.  None of us would want to live in states where leaders lie and manipulate the people, but judging by the popularity of shows like House of Cards,  we suspect we do already.   Although I would not advocate The Prince as a way to government — I put personal stock in virtue, honor, truth, all that dated and impolitic stuff —    I suspect even good, well-intentioned people who come into power find themselves enacting its lessons as they settle into office.  The Prince has enormous value for me in its naked view of man the political creature, admitting as it does the limitations of building societies from the crooked timber of humanity.

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