Dear Subscriber,
Spring is about to be sprung. Good show! But I want to talk about reality: global warming crisis, war, image, addictions, censorship, and other reality stuff that make many folks cringe.
How about this? The publishing giants are “sanitizing” our work! Without permission. As an author, academic, and researcher, I find this practice not only illegal but abhorrent. It’s why I got out of mainstream “for profit at all costs” publishing in 1995. Who needs some publisher telling you what is “right and wrong” in your work? However, when that publisher changes content behind your back, it becomes “sanitizing for profit” instead of facing reality.
R. L. Stine (author of the “Goosebumps” horror series for children) had the nerve (many authors don’t) to stand-up to this censorship. In fact, unless you’re a wealthy author, what chance do you have against these big publishing giants? Is the American Civil Liberties Union going to take your case? Probably not. There are too many of them to count.
Also, I want to use some critical thinking skills on this R. L. Stine case. If you read the article about what they censored, it was to make “fat” look better to kids so they won’t get self-conscious about themselves and perhaps become suicidal. In other words, for their mental health.
The family recently going into Mexico from South Carolina, and two were killed, were going there for “cosmetic surgery.” This means “appearance.” We are so obsessed in the U.S.A. by image that we risk our lives to get it changed. Also, South Carolina has such horrible healthcare that folks have to go to Mexico to afford it. Plus, the drug cartel who killed them sold a product that allowed users to alter their reality on the inside, so the users don’t have to look at the world as it really is. And now, big publishers add to the unreal “image worship” by doctoring horror fiction and other classic texts? When I got “clean and sober,” the #1 task was to get honest with myself. Not with others. Not with publishing’s ideas of what people “should” look like. Nope. Reality. Stare it right in the face.
Do you understand how and why I connected those logical dots? I do it often. I taught it to college students. Think for yourself rather than for what the mainstream media and advertisers might want you to believe about yourself. It’s as old as Socrates, but our reality is changing, and I don’t think it’s a good thing. The State and Corporations are actually stepping in and selling “freedom of choice” as if it’s your choice and not their choice.
For example, I have a serial going on now about Auschwitz-Berkenau in Poland, 1943. I am in the fifth installment of this series. If you want to read the first introductory chapter, it’s here. The controversy is that my topic is not politically correct these days. My darling wife, Ellen, who passed from Lewy Body Dementia six years ago, was Jewish. She would have loved this series I’ve written because it’s not only historical, but it is also Science Fiction, two of her favorite reading genres. One of my fans, who lives in Tel Aviv, really enjoyed it and did a review of it. She actually thought I was being “too soft” on the Nazis and reality of the prison camps, and that’s interesting, as there’s a lot of anti-Semitism going on right now, and some folks not only don’t believe the Holocaust was real, or it was exaggerated, but they blame the Jews for why it happened!
Therefore, please read carefully between the lines, if you will, and do your own research. Why? Because most of the mainstream media today only wants the dots connected when they find them–not when you find them. Plus, if it makes more money for them one way, chances are, they won’t look any other way to see it.
Take care, and keep reading deeply!
James Musgrave
