Ideas and ideological matching: Invisible Sun, by Charles Stross

 Let's delve into ideology this morning.  Yet again.  What?  I'm a political scientist.  Yes, we are going to examine a science fiction novel, in a long-running series on parallel universes (univ... is that really the plural of "universe," and should there really be a plural of "universe?"), and once again, I am going to ramble about the internal structure of ideology.  Why does Idea A go with Idea B?  Must it?  Let's consider.  And fair warning, for those who just read these for the political/social commentary.  I need to get through an unusually large amount of plot summary, because Invisible Sun is deep into a series.

It is possibly the last book in a series which has actually been broken up, so depending on the number of the counting, three may be the number of the counting.  Or nine.  It's kind of like time signatures in complex music.  You can count it different ways.  (But five is right out.)  Charles Stross began the "Merchant Princes" series many moons ago, about parallel universes, initially focusing on something almost-but-not-quite our universe, and a universe sort of stuck in a medieval stage of political, social and technological development because a butterfly flapped its wings, and history diverged.  So, North America is sparsely colonized by a Nordic, feudal empire, within which is a clan of "world-walkers," who have the ability to travel to the more technologically-advanced universe.  They use their world-walking ability to get rich.  They smuggle drugs from "our" world through assbackwardsville, where there are no borders or customs, then use the money to buy stuff that is worth far more in Podunkistan.  That way, they are rich in two universes.  Perfect smugglers in "our" universe, and purveyors of impossible technology in the other.  Perfect!  What could possibly go wrong?

Conflict ensues, both within the Gruinmarkt (assbackwardsville), and moderntimes.  The DEA closes in on the world-walking smugglers, and as they start to figure out what is happening, it all builds towards a war between the universes, made worse by internal political conflicts within the Gruinmarkt.  Everything goes to shit when extremists from the Gruinmarkt nuke Washington D.C., and the military responds by nuking the Eastern Seaboard in assbackwardsville.  That's the breaking point between the two sub-series.  That gets you up through the first six books.  At that point, the main character, Miriam, and a bunch of her people flee to a third universe, which is a century or so behind us, technologically speaking (fucking butterflies), and they cut a deal for asylum.  Now you're into sub-series 2, which is books 7-9.  Three is the number of the counting.

The main character from Books 1-6, Miriam, was raised in moderntimes before discovering that she was the daughter of some Clan world-walker, at which point she gets embroiled in inter-dimensional politics and warfare.  Early on, and by accident, she found that third universe-- JustABitBehindTheTimes-- and had some business ideas, but before we got the chance to see that play out, she got herself locked in a tower in assbackwardsville in the worst book in the series.  Blah, blah, shit happens, and we periodically get more of JustABitBehindTheTimes in Books 1-6.  The deal is that something happened a few centuries ago with one of those fucking butterflies, forcing the British Monarchy out of the British Isles, relocating to the New World, while France becomes the main power in the Old World.  For reasons, this holds back technological developments a bit.  Anyway, democracy never develops, so while shit is happening in moderntimes and assbackwardsville, there is also a revolution in JustABitBehindTheTimes, booting the King, who heads back to the Old World to seek asylum and plot to reclaim his throne.  Also, by author contrivance, the first dude Miriam meets when she gets to that universe was deeply embroiled in the plot to overthrow the King.  Because of course.

So when you're in Books 7-9, the North American Commonwealth has kicked out the King, and Miriam is part of the government, running an inter-dimensional/industrial espionage ring, stealing technology from moderntimes based on the expectation that the military from moderntimes will eventually find her, her people, and everyone else in JustABitBehindTheTimes, and nuke'em'all.

Enter her long-lost daughter, like a fuckin' soap opera, and now we're at Book 7.  Or 1.

Miriam's daughter, Rita, can world-walk, so she gets recruited to be a government agent to start messing with JustABitBehindTheTimes.  She's your main POV character in the new series, despite being in way over her head, which to some degree, is a welcome correction from Miriam, who was kind of a Mary Sue, but anyway.  She gets embroiled in inter-dimensional spy games, which take up Books 7, and 8 (1 & 2?), leading us to Invisible Sun.

That's a longer than usual wind-up, but it's a long series, and I have no fucking clue who reads these, and frankly, it's weird that anyone does.

Anyway, the head of state in the Commonwealth is some rando named Adam Burroughs-- the "First Man."  The King is plotting a return to power, through his only heir, a daughter.  But, she wants to defect, and swear allegiance to the Commonwealth, which Miriam and her people are trying to arrange.  Books 7-8 show that going pear-shaped, and then, in Invisible Sun, Burroughs dies, cranking up the pressure by creating a succession crisis.

The Commonwealth has never had a succession before, and everywhere else is just about inheritance.  So... in theory, they have a process written into their constitution, but nothing like that has ever been tested, and then a faction gets vague wind of something about the King's daughter...

The Commonwealth has an army, but the Radical Party also has its own separate militia, and that militia misinterprets every rumor they hear about the King's daughter, thinking that Miriam and company are plotting to use Burrough's death and the King's daughter as a restoration of the monarchy rather than a public defection.  So, they form a junta, and everything goes to shit.

This, while the Americans in moderntimes are freaking out about the fact that Miriam's industrial espionage operation has created a batshit, nuclear-armed space battleship* (way too fast, and not even close to practical, but it's sci-fi, so whatever), while also freaking out about some other shit in another timeline.

So there you are.  Succession crisis in the only semi-democracy (?) in JustABitBehindTheTimes, inter-dimensional espionage, and the threat of an alien invasion from other timelines.  Easy-peasy.  Also, there's a defunct East German spy ring, and... fuck, there's a lot goin' on.  So lemme just try to zero in on some interesting stuff.  Otherwise, I'll get bogged down in even more details from Book... 9?  Number 9?  Number 9?  Or 3 is the number of the counting.  Fuck it.  Either way, it's a British joke, and Stross is a Brit, and I should quit dithering and be a fucking political scientist.

Ideology.  Ideology gets a bad reputation in public discourse, in part because it is weakly defined, as so many words are, but in political science, we have a formal definition, as I often remind... well, nobody, since nobody reads these damned things, but whatever.  An ideology is a set of connections between issue positions.  It is "constraint," as described by Philip Converse.  To have an ideology is to be constrained to take the policy positions consistent with that ideology.  To be liberal is to be constrained to take the liberal position on a range of policy issues (yet of course, the word "liberal," has a different meaning to the Brits), and to be conservative is to be constrained to take the conservative position on a range of issues.  It is the connective tissue between beliefs which guides and provides the beliefs.  Not all constraints are logical.  Some are psychological or sociologically generated, but in any case, it is the constraint.

Since we can construct ideologies in so many ways, the bundles of positions that get put together in one basket shift over time.  They are... socially constructed.  Some things are socially constructed, and some are not.  Ideology is socially constructed.  In fact, that's part of the constraining process.  So what goes together?

In Stross's moderntimes timeline, we see the following.  A bit after 9/11 (July 16, 2003), a worse terrorist attack occurs when world-walking nutjobs from assbackwardsville decide to nuke the White House.  What happens subsequently?  America doesn't just nuke the Eastern Seaboard in assbackwardsville.  Political changes occur.  America becomes a police state.  Think about post-9/11 politics.  We got the Patriot Act, and some controversies over FISA, and yadda-yadda, but in the scheme of things, the national security/surveillance state apparatus could have gotten much more intrusive.  In Stross's constructed timeline, once the White House gets nuked, Cheney assumes the office, dies soon after, and Rumsfeld becomes President amid succession stuff.  (Um... never mind, I won't bother you with succession politics**.)

Rumsfeld, combined with the terrorist attack itself, and you get a dramatically changed America.  After all, you have "world-walkers."  Dimensional travelers who can pop up anywhere, any time, with a nuke... and... kaboom.  Kinda scary, no?  Way worse than 9/11, right?  See how that kind of threat, combined with seeing it in reality, changes things?  So the American public accepts draconian security measures, as surveillance measures to find and stop world-walkers.

Now.  Ideology.  What goes with what?  What goes with... a surveillance state?  What goes with... do we want to call that fascism?

So this gets interesting.  I occasionally poke at authors-- including recently Charles Stross-- for woke virtue-signaling, but consider how the politics of America have changed since the first George W. Bush term.  Consider gay rights.  And do it empirically.  Public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of gay rights.  (What will Clarence Thomas do, or try to do?  Right now, I won't hazard a guess, but given public opinion, he'll have a difficult time.)  We went from majority opposition to gay marriage, to overwhelming majority support, in that time period, just as one example.

What if a butterfly flapped its wings?

World-walking terrorist with a nuke.  Ramp up that police state surveillance thing...  What else would change?  Would we still see that movement?

In the timeline Stross constructed, it didn't happen.  Rita is gay, because of course she is.  It is a sci-fi book, published in 2021.  But, living in "Rumsfeld's America," as the phrase is used (even after he is gone), that progress never happened, so Rita cannot live openly gay in the same way she could in our America, in 2022.  Which... yes she could.  Be empirical.  None of that "progressophobia" shit that Steven Pinker addresses.

But this is fascinating, as an ideological point!  What goes with what?  Is there any logically necessary reason that progress on gay rights would be stymied by a surveillance state to stop world-walking terrorists with nukes?  (At that point, the threat is actually gone, but they don't know that, so the paranoia remains.)  No, but Lawrence v. Texas was... 2003!  Same year as the world-walking terrorists with the nuke.  A couple of weeks earlier, in fact.  We're really not all that far, historically, from some really bad shit, and the nuking of DC in Stross's alternate timeline?  Right around there.

So there are a few things.  First, the concept of privacy...

Hmmm... "right to privacy."  Hmmm...  gee...  Um... Right to privacy.  Is... there any particular reason I might comment on this today?  Lemme think.  Lemme think about that.  Right to privacy.

Ramp up that surveillance state in order to deal with a far more serious threat of terrorism (illusory, mostly), and what goes with that is abandonment of the philosophical principle of the right to privacy, which is the legal basis of, well... stuff like the ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (a few weeks before the terrorist nuking in Book 6), Obergefell v. Hodges...

Clarence is comin' for you, without a nuke as a precursor.  Will he have support?  Dunno.

Anyway, then there is the issue that a political world focused on the threat of nuclear-armed, world-walking terrorists is just not going to move the same way, psychologically.  Ideologically, this makes sense.  This is coherent.  It was not necessary that we observe the progress we have observed on gay rights.  Because ideology is constructed, socially, it can be constructed differently.  And reconstructed.

The arc of history bends as force is applied by whoever is applying force.

Now let's talk about JustABitBehindTheTimes.  Stross perhaps wanted to say something here, but did not do so as effectively.  Adam Burroughs is... maybe Lenin?  Or maybe Thomas Jefferson?  But you can't be both, which is why JustABitBehindTheTimes is more incoherent.

Burroughs led a revolution in North America to kick out the King and establish something like a democracy, but... it is never clear what is meant by "democracy," and there's some other crazy shit going on there.

Let's start with the d-word.  I get squirrelly about this one.  No, there is no formal definition of, "democracy."  We use the term, colloquially, to describe systems of government in which power ultimately rests within the public, through voting.  Or something like that.  But it can happen in many ways.  Yet Burroughs's succession looks more like the selection of a new Pope, and it is never clear how those who select the new pontiffman (who was predictably going to be Miriam's fuckboy, who was, of course, the first person she met when she got to that universe) are, themselves, selected.  Also, there is one party?  Um... no.  If there are elections, it'll take a few years, max, before you get multiple parties, unless competing parties are outlawed, in which case it isn't any form of democracy, which brings me to...

... the whole place becomes clear as an analogy to the Soviet Union, complete with a Politburo, and such.  Ministry of Propaganda, you name it, they're doin' it.

But where's the communism?  What's their economic philosophy?  Do they have one?  Or even political philosophy?  There are intimations of belief in liberty and such, and periodically they reference some form of that three-word French blather, but what is the actual structure?  It is never clear.

The problem is, an unchecked, one-party system, Soviet-style cannot sustain protection of any form of liberty, we don't see any coherent policy on the ground, nor economic philosophy beyond Miriam's 5-year-plans on motherfuckin' steroids to bring the place up to technological parity with America fast fast fast, and that means we have an analogy to the Soviet Union in general political structure with no policy directly stated, but implied that hey, it ain't that bad!

But... no.  It was that bad.  And it was that bad everywhere that tried it.  That system?  As it turns out, it doesn't work, anywhere.  That means, you try it in a butterflied timeline, and it still won't fucking work because when power is concentrated in one party, in the Politburo, they don't protect liberty, and even their science is subject to Lysenko-ism.

So JustABitBehindTheTimes?  Um... not quite.  Burroughs cannot be both Lenin and Jefferson.  Jefferson had many flaws, blah-blah, behold my modern wokeness!  Excuse me while I whip...  my wokenss out!  (Put that wokeness away!  No one wants to see that!)

Moving on.  Jefferson was flawed, but he was an Enlightenment rationalist who wrote some damned-fine principles, and we have moved towards those principles.  Lenin was a psychopath who rejected those principles.  He rejected the very ideas that were at the core of the founding.

Oh, and as long as you're canceling anyone who was racist, go read fucking Marx.  Do you have any clue how racist that motherfucker was?  Why doesn't his ass get canceled?  Why don't you tear down everything dedicated to him, remove everything written by him and derived from him from course syllabi...

I'll take Thomas Jefferson over Karl Marx every day of the week and twice on Sunday, which is today.

And Adam Burroughs cannot be both.  So what is the North American Commonwealth?  A Soviet state?  If so, there can be no protection for individuals, because the political structure does not permit it.  A one party system, with no check?  Nope.  That's spelled D-O-O-M for liberty, my friends.

Take note.  Take lessons.  Take heed.  Take warning.

And music.  The wonders of youtube.  I did not expect to find this, but hey!  When I was in undergrad, this band was one of the better local bands playing in Southern California, but with the fickle music industry, they never made it big.  Too bad.  Sages Of Memphis, "Butterfly."  They put out two indie releases, and recorded this for the first of them, Jewel.  This is admittedly a dated style, but they really could play.  Simeon Flick on lead guitar, and Dave Napolitan on bass.  The singer/acoustic guitarist also released a few albums under the name, Oso Rey.

*Stross dug up some bit of lunacy from the pages of early space-age engineering dreamworks called, Project Orion.  The idea was to power space ships by ejecting nuclear bombs behind the ship and using the force of that pulse to push on a push-plate.  Here's the thing-- when you read something like that in a Stross book, you know he didn't invent it.  You know he dug it up from some batshit engineer.  Go read about Project Orion.  The maddest of mad scientists weren't in movies or comic books.  They were real.  Remember:  if a writer came up with something batshit, that means a human can come up with something batshit.

**I will, however, gripe about a thing that has bugged me for years.  So in the first series, Cheney's CIA code name was "WARBUCKS."  Cheap joke, but whatever.  So when various intelligence functionaries refer to him, that's how.  Then, at the end of Book 6, Rummy is giving his speech to the nation, and instead of saying "Cheney," he says, "WARBUCKS."  You wanna give Cheney that code name?  OK, sure, fine.  But that's a CIA code name, not his fucking name.  Stross made a decision that he just wanted to use "WARBUCKS" to refer to Cheney, and make a practice of it.  He wrote himself into a corner when Rummy gave his speech to the nation after assuming the oath of office.