DShomshak

Thing is, the studies I've seen of Trump active supporters (not merely the "Any Republican" or "Anyone Who's Not Hillary" voters) is that they aren't really hurting. Not lost-the-house, how-will-we-eat hurting. Sure, many of the working-class supporters aren't as sure of their economic security as they once were. But many of them are quite well off.
 
Economically and culturally, the chief grievances seem to be what Arlene Hochschild (in her Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right) called "line-cutting." Other people seem to be getting ahead, getting the rewards of wealth and social approval that these people -- virtually all older and white -- think are their due. You're white, and every authority figure you've ever seen before is white (and oh, but authority and the social order matter the world to you!) -- and suddenly there's a black president. Your Christian faith and traditional marriages matter the world to you too, and suddenly there are Mooslims in the country and Gay Pride parades on the news.
 
A less charitable person than Hochschild would say it's their white Christian caste privilege they see in danger. And that danger's been building long before the Great Recession happened. White Nationalist rage has been building for decades. Some politicians have stoked it and exploited it. And now it's given them Trump.
 
Plus there's just a lot of people who still think in terms of a tribal village surrounded by other hostile villages, not a humungous country in a very large and very complicated world.
 
Dean Shomshak

Thing is, the studies I've seen of Trump active supporters (not merely the "Any Republican" or "Anyone Who's Not Hillary" voters) is that they aren't really hurting. Not lost-the-house, how-will-we-eat hurting. Sure, many of the working-class supporters aren't as sure of their economic security as they once were. But many of them are quite well off.
 
Economically and culturally, the chief grievances seem to be what Arlene Hochschild (in her Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right) called "line-cutting." Other people seem to be getting ahead, getting the rewards of wealth and social approval that these people -- virtually all older and white -- think are their due. You're white, and every authority figure you've ever seen before is white (and oh, but authority and the social order matter the world to you!) -- and suddenly there's a black president. Your Christian faith and traditional marriages matter the world to you too, and suddenly there are Mooslims in the country and Gay Pride parades on the news.
 
A less charitable person than Hochschild would say it's their white Christian caste privilege they see in danger. And that danger's been building long before the Great Recession happened. White Nationalist rage has been building for decades. Some politicians have stoked it and exploited it. And now it's given them Trump.
 
Plus there's just a lot of people who still think in terms of a tribal village surrounded by other hostile villages, not a humungous country in a very large and very complicated world.
 
Dean Shomshak

Thing is, the studies I've seen of Trump active supporters (not merely the "Any Republican" or "Anyone Who's Not Hillary" voters) is that they aren't really hurting. Not lost-the-house, how-will-we-eat hurting. Sure, many of the working-class supporters aren't as sure of their economic security as they once were. But many of them are quite well off.
 
Economically and culturally, the chief grievances seem to be what Arlene Hochschild (in her Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right) called "line-cutting." Other people seem to be getting ahead, getting the rewards of wealth and social approval that these people -- virtually all older and white -- think are their due. You're white, and every authority figure you've ever seen before is white (and oh, but authority and the social order matter the world to you!) -- and suddenly there's a black president. Your Christian faith and traditional marriages matter the world to you too, and suddenly there are Mooslims in the country and Gay Pride parades on the news.
 
A less charitable person than Hochschild would say it's their white Christian caste privilege they see in danger. And that danger's been building long before the Great Recession happened. White Nationalist rage has been building for decades. Some politicians have stoked it and exploited it. And now it's given them Trump.
 
Plus there's just a lot of people who still think in terms of a tribal village surrounded by other hostile villages, not a humungous country in a very large and very complicated world.
 
Dean Shomshak

So, the players got to meet (actually rescue/capture) Major Vasilov, as well as encountering a Shadow Creature summoned by Darkforce.  The best part was when Shadow Boxer figured out that the hero team was being spied upon through nearby shadows -- which is usually his gig. 
 
The plot involved the Boston Commons (at Secession Squad's behest) kidnapping the son of a certain unnamed political figure when said son was secretly meeting with Vasilov.  The Commons captured Vasilov as well, and had staged things to look like the hero team was responsible for the kidnapping.  When the heroes found out about Vasilov, they further researched Red Alert enough to learn a bit about Mother Russia. 
 
During the actual rescue mission (mainly the heroes wanted to clear their own names), as they were preparing to teleport out, they realized they couldn't force Vasilov to go with them.  So their mentalist used a Mental Illusion on him to make herself appear to be Mother Russia and convinced him to go along willingly.  (And yes, the mentalist knows how to speak Russian.)  All in all, a successful mini-introduction of Red Alert.
 
Many thanks to all for your suggestions and comments.  I plan to use them to further flesh out Red Alert, as this team will likely play a part in future adventures.

ADDENDUM:
 
WE SEE IT IN VISIBLE LIGHT ALSO
 
(triumphal dancing)

Gravity wave observatories find merging neutron star event
 
From the press release:
 

But the symbology is a little backward, The hammer represents the industrial proletariat and the sickle represents the agricultural workers. They're not weapons. Plus modern Russia eschews overt Soviet symbology. Save that stuff for cold war settings, really.
 
The Federal Security Service do continue to use the old KGB sword & shield badge, but with the soviet emblem replaced with the Russian Federation one. Same job, same symbolism.
 
The Russian Federation patriotic colours are red, white and blue. The national emblem is this:
 

 
I could see a flag suit called Russian Eagle (Русский орел - Russkiy orel); white bodysuit with the shield on the chest and blue and red trim. The rider is St George killing a dragon with a spear, so there's another image you could run with. Make him from Georgia for a double dip of patron saint.

There's a range of more or less nasty options, depending on how you want your Putin to be.
 
I'd tend to have him tread very carefully in regards to Mother Russia's family. Genuine protective custody would be my default. He will want to be working with this person and not against her. Making it so she can't find them? I'd not buy that. Giving them new lives and guarding them carefully, as with MCU Hawkeye's family, which earns her gratitude and establishes a level of dependence? That's more Putin's style, IMHO.

Hmmm... I don't want the element to be too common, because I don't want the PCs to have ready access to it.  (Plus, I made her powers not work in the presence of an Uncommon element, and I don't want to redo all of that.)  Though I could make it a relatively rare Earth element that her home world didn't have.  (quick research - just found this listing of radioactive gems that might be useful.  There's even one called - I kid you not - Coffinite.  Though I'm inclined toward Chevkinite, which was named after a Russian general-major who was chief of staff of the Russian Mining Engineers Corps.)
 
Truly Evil GM Moment -- I could still have the meteorites (kinda like the sound of stalinite), which the players will immediately latch onto... but it doesn't have any effect on her at all.  ("Why are you waving that rock in my face, Honey Badger?  Is that supposed to be some American humor that I just don't understand?")
 
As to General Zima, that's an idea.  One of his kids, or grandkids, could be a member of Red Alert.  I'll have to think on that.  Thanks.

Yeah, time travel stories tend to explode if you look at them too hard.
 
I will say this for The Orville: These characters are all good people. Flawed, sure, but decent. There's no one I really dislike (though the blob is pushing it).
 
Dean Shomshak

I was still too attached to TOS to respect or enjoy TNG, I guess. The lack of military precision/protocol on the bridge was a real sticking point with me. I was never sold on Denise Crosby as the ranking security officer, and putting a Klingon aboard a Federation vessel was just too much (to buy into). Moreover, Q struck me as just a poor man's copy of Trelaine (no offense to John Delancy, who is a great actor), and the Ferengi were the worst Trek "villains" ever (up to that point). Wesley was the least of the show's problems.

That's part of what I found interesting. I don't think the Union has a Prime Directive, and that and the lack of transporters can have a major twist.
 
I almost hope they revisit this particular bio ship. They probably won't, but I'm curious how the society is affected by this. Traditionally there's going to be a power struggle of some sort, but are we talking full on Reign of Terror or what?

Apparently unmanned probes are against starfleet's religious views. A woman manually flying a space suit is apparently more practical than a small, automated probe with an AI of some sort. I guess hot sassy black women are the new ubermenschen.
 
Also I guess wire guided systems, a technology first used by Nazis in ww2, has also been forgotten. Just once I'd like to see situation where xxxx was jamming transmissions so they had a probe trailing a fibe-op diamond filament wire behind it.
 
The white Klingon was the poor oppressed minority until he proved himself. Real subtle...
 
Again the cloak was new in tos and Spock had to speculate on it's nature. Now they were old hat in pre tos shows.
 
I will not criticize the show for the fact it's tech looks so much higher that TOS or the movies. I understand the realities of time, technological advance and budget.

So, if in fiction there is a war between Earth and the Moon and the earthguys say "you want a piece of me, boy?" the moonguys can say "we already have"?

The October issue of Scientific American has an informative and very pretty retrospective on the Cassini mission. Also brief articles on planned tests for solar sails, legal questions around asteroid mining, and the possibility of finding bits of the very early Earth preserved on the Moon.
 
Dean Shomshak

Trump and his people aren't competent enough to pull something like this.  Really, they would be reporting on the plot on the front page Washington Post before it got out of the spitballing phase, and since nothing would have actually have happened yet, the Trump administration would successfully play off as some poor taste joking.  Then Trump would hold a rally and ask if the joke was really in all that poor of taste.  His audience would assure him that no not really.  There might be some chanting of "Blow them up! Blow them up!"

The irony is, the rhetoric coming out of North Korea really hasn't changed in decades. This is the same sort of saber Kim Jong Un's father and grandfather rattled, which in the past eventually led to them getting at least some of what they wanted. The situation was never allowed to get to the point of proving whether any of the Kims were actually serious. But now for the first time, similar rhetoric is coming out of Washington.

Another black hole merger event was detected by gravity-wave observatories last month, including VIRGO, in Europe, recently come on-line. The preliminary detection was announced a day or two ago. Three observatories allows for much better localization in space, as seen by this item in APOD.

Yes. I liked that cultural tradition won. Not because I'm a fan of cultural tradition, but changing them is slow and hard. The work of decades, or centuries, with a lot of people fighting you every step of the way. For the tribunal to say, "Sure, let the kid stay female" just because of a little logic and a single shock revelation would have been just so phony.
 
And it was good that we saw Bortus valued his child more than any political point.
 
As has been mentioned, the first two episodes ended in punchlines. This was more moving than I expected. Not great -- there were some hiccups nd awkward bits -- but it shows promise.
 
Dean Shomshak

Totally fair. 
 
I think whether we like the Orville or not, there is a commonality we can all agree on
 
 
We all miss Firefly
 
*Sigh*
 

"You can't have everything.  Where would you put it."
 
Steven Wright

Maybe this is Quark: The Next Generation

I've been reminded that I also wasn't much impressed with the first episode of Babylon-5, and I thought that turned out pretty darn good. Series pilots can be, um, rough. A friend also said he'd read a review saying the first two eps were nuthin' special but the third was thought-provoking. So I'll stick around for three episodes. Then we'll see.
 
Dean Shomshak

<Adds suggestion to my pile of campaign ideas>
 
Dean Shomshak

Now, socialism. Warning: long and a bit dry, but let us see what the Dictionary of Political Thought has to say in defining socialism, without trying to argue whether it’s good or bad.
 
As a purely economic doctrine, I’ve been told that socialism simply means that the state exerts some control over the means of production and distribution. One should probably add: For conscious pursuit of social or political goals. After all, in Medieval Europe the feudal aristocracy controlled the principle means of production — land — but this was not for some conscious program of social engineering, so I don’t think it would be fair to call manorialism “socialist.”
 
Scruton notes that, as with so many political terms, “socialism” is a wide term. He sees two principle, though related meanings:
 
First, “In Marxian theory and official communist language… the means of production are taken into social ownership, and the state persists as an administrative machine, upholding a new order of legality, and a new system of rights, in such a way as to permit the emergence of true common ownership, and the eventual abolition of the state.” I.e., the state owns everything in the name of the workers and peasants, with the promise that it will eventually become superfluous and the workers and peasants will own and control everything themselves — but in common, not individually.
 
(Scruton wrote his dictionary in 1982. Leaving aside the morality of socialism as practiced by the USSR and others, we may say this “hard-core socialism” has not fared well in experimental trials.)
 
In a second meaning, socialism is a philosophical and political doctrine that includes “a broad and comprehensive outlook on the human condition.” It’s also conceived as permanent, rather than a transitional stage to some future utopia. This broader interpretation of socialism is based on three postulates:
 
1) Equality: Equal opportunity as well as equal rights under law, with an eye toward equalizing outcomes for individuals. “The main consideration is that human beings have equal rights, since they are equal in every way relevant to those rights.”
 
2) The state as administrator: “The state is seen, not as the legal and ceremonial representation of civil society, but rather as a complex administrative device, designed to guarantee individual rights, and to distribute benefits among the citizens in accordance with those rights.” It must “provide and maintain the institutions which ensure that human goods — food, medicine, education, recreation — are made available to everybody on terms hat are as equal as possible.” But the state is not an end in itself; and it should not be used to propagate “religious doctrine, or nationalist ideology.” It is a powerful tool, but just a tool.
 
3) Elimination of systems of control. Class systems, hereditary privileges, and other means by which people control and compel each other violate the principle of equal rights, and so are unjust.
 
Private property receives special mention: “Private property is permissible, but only insofar as it does not amount to a system of control.” While “Type 2 Socialists” reject the hard-core Marxian condemnation of all private property as a means of privilege and control, and may believe that private property is a legitimate expectation of citizens in a well-ordered society, socialists do think that vast concentrations of wealth and property can harm the interests of society and the citizens. “Hence, the state must always be ready to nationalize major assets, and should curtail or forbid the transactions that lead to large-scale private accumulation — such as gifts and inheritance.”
 
As Scruton notes, socialism has a long and natural affiliation with labor movements, “for the obvious reason that, while it promises very little and threatens much to the class of property owners, it promises much and threatens little, or seems to threaten little, to the workers.”
 
He also notes that under Western parliamentary government, socialism has shown it can be implemented pragmatically, democratically and with compromise, without attempting to impose any of the three underlying principles in pure form. Some even say “this ‘parliamentary road to socialism’ is in fact a creature so different from the socialism of the communist state as to be only misleadingly called by the same name.”
 
Criticisms of “Type 2 socialism” reject one or more of its postulates, or see contradictions between them. For instance, some people insist that 1) is wrong and all people are not and should not be equal under law.
 
Some thinkers argue that the state must be treated as an end in itself in order to obtain the loyalty of the people: As a pure service-provider “it comes to seem arbitary and dispensable, and therefore holds increasing power with increasing instability.”
 
Other critics see a conflict between 2) and 3), arguing that the all-pervading power of the state merely creates another self-interested élite. It is also argued that the ideal of “social justice” that runs through 1) and 3) is “incompatible with the assertion of natural rights and freedoms.”
 
I don’t see anything monstrous in this “type 2 socialism.” Arguable, either in theory or practice, but nothing outside the normal bounds of rational discourse. In fact, I accept postulate 1) without reservation; and I agree with postulate 2) with reservations (I see the state as a rational machine for achieving practical goals, but accept to achieve those goals it may need to pretend to some greater majesty. One may also question the implicit assumption that the state is the *only* institution to fulfill this distributive and administrative function). 3) seems to be where the practical difficulties seem greatest, though I appreciate the goal. It’s a bad joke to talk of “rights” and “freedom” to people who are externally constrained by poverty, racism, etc. from being able to exercise them.
 
So that's Scruton. I don't claim any special authority for his dictionary, but it's the one I found for cheap at Goodwill so it's the one I use.
 
Dean Shomshak