Blogs,books and magazine articles from the writings of the author Ted Bailey.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Are Republicans Strong and Democrats Weak?

13 February 2007



SHANGHAI, Feb. 13 – Today the world teeters on the brink of change with news centering on warnings, death, and accusations, yet hope somehow peeks around the corner, not so much a light at the end of the tunnel but a mere glimmer. It’s like the peak of a summit of an upward climb or the end of the first act of a play. Now, we wait for the situations to fall into place. At this point, solutions are meaningless.


The headlines are as follows: “Bombs across Baghdad kill 71….Iran supplying arms to Iraq…Skydiving man falls 2 miles & lives to tell about it.”


Further news describe how the militants of the world are attempting delay of game, as they call it in football, for the next American presidential election, in hopes of a Democratic win. They feel such a president would be less apt to go to war. Obviously, like a child waiting for the parents to leave home for the evening, the militant organizations feel freedom is soon coming.


This freedom for them means asserting control over their respective American-backed segments of society that hitherto remains hands-off. America elicits fear to militants on the earth with good reason: No one wants an American fighter-bomber ramming a missile down his throat. From the militant governments’ actions, they think George W. Bush will, and a democrat won’t.


So far, results from talks with the North Koreans about nuclear weapons seem to be more like waiting for customer service at the post office; it’s slow in coming. Speculation is, Kim Jong-Il wants South Korea and is willing to wait until a democrat takes power in the US. Signs of this same strategy are popping up all over the world: Iran and Iraq, Palestine and Israel, and China and Taiwan.


The world apparently thinks Republicans are strong and Democrats are weak. Is it that, or Democrats are consistently bogged down in the bureaucracy of too much government and the Republicans get things done? Could it be, these are but traditional party-line rhetoric that has proliferated the world attitude?


Without going to great lengths to dig up supporting background from the past to support any particular argument one way or the other, militant factions, whether it be Al-Qaeda or governments that oppose the US should never forget one major point: the people rule.


Don’t make them mad.


9/11 should have made this one point perfectly clear. One particular political party doesn’t change this one iota. If you make the American people angry, you will suffer the consequences, whether or not the UN, the American president, Congress, or the Judiciary yells and screams in opposition. The public simply boots them out and makes retaliation happen.


No government official, American or otherwise, or peasant of a third world nation, or weapon-bearing militant, or rich oil tycoon should ever forget this. The American people will not allow anyone to trample on the rest of the world, much less America, without eventually intervening with force, despite party lines. Why do you think it’s still in the American constitution to allow the citizens to bear arms?

Monday, February 05, 2007

I'm working on a couple of books that will change how I write in the future. After a great deal of reading in the action and war fiction genres, I've taken notice to a couple of authors I really like: Mathew Reilly, from England; Tom Clancy's ghost writers under the name of David Michaels, all American (John Spence, I think for one), Dan Brown, an American writer, of the Da Vinci Code, and, of course, Tom Clancy, who is very American, if you know what I mean.

Out of all of these, Mathew Reilly is the most exciting and Tom is the most prolific. Of the two, I have to proclaim Reilly as my favorite. I love reading the very young Reilly. I simply have a hard time putting his books down. And they aren't small, either!

What makes them so great? The action. The flat-out, burning fast, kick-ass action that doesn't stop until the last page, and leaves you wanting more. Reilly. Don't for forget the name. Mathew is the first name. From England, no less, and I don't usually go for Brit writers. Grab one of his books. You'll thank me later.

My style has always been very close to the great Stephen J. Cannell, whose writing I love, to say the least. However, after reading these other guys, I've decided to loosen up the binds retaining my conservativism and explode. I can see how previously held conventions of writing have been thrown out the window by guys like Reilly. The English language is changing. Literature is evolving into something more understandably what I call ,"now writing", stuff that deseves to be held up as the modern linguistics, the style of the streets, if you will. Frankly, I never liked the stiff upper lip sort of writing from Europe and the American past. Conversely, I didn't want to appear hoolaginstically illiterate, either.

From the Zen techniques of Ray Bradbury to the highly technical prose of Isaac Asimov to the historically correct and philosophically challenging epics of Clancy, there must be a convergence of words I can effectively assemble in an aesthetically pleasing, yet intellectually provocative manner, bulging at the seams with masculinity and muscular fast action story that works, but doesn't reek of someone else's style, only that of my own construction. To that end will I punch the keys.

If I can somehow tell a good story in an enjoyable way, I'll be happy. TRB
Happy Chinese New Year!

Also, it has been one year since I updated this blog. You know why? It was blocked by China for that long, that's why. Right after I started this blog a year ago, China started blocking blog sites. Today I happened to check on it from Shanghai, where I'm living again, and found it to come up on the screen, unblocked.

Now that it works, let's go again and make some verbal noise.

Ted