The Conscience of Abe’s Turn - New Abe's Turn Review, and Ignorance of Civil Rights Issues - Comments

Re: New Abe's Turn Review, and Ignorance of Civil Rights Issues

Ravenskya — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:32:14 -0800

Thank you, I didn’t mean to sound harsh. I actually think that you are a very good author and have created very real and interesting characters. I also think that your point is an important one, just not as well fleshed out as it could have been. If you are writing a series, then these issues can be easily clarified in your follow up novel. I really do hope that you continue writing, you show a lot of promise.

Re: New Abe's Turn Review, and Ignorance of Civil Rights Issues

TimK — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:04:00 -0800

Thanks for you comments, Ravenskya. That is a valid criticism. I thought I had addressed those issues in the prologue, but I guess not in enough detail to satisfy your tastes.

-TimK

Re: New Abe's Turn Review, and Ignorance of Civil Rights Issues

Ravenskya — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:42:17 -0800

Actually, since you brought me into it. The issue is that nowhere in your book did you enlighten anyone on any steps that the characters had taken prior to the current ones. It is not an issue of my not believing that these things occur every day through out the country, its that in the writing of your book you failed to enlighten the reader on the truely hopeless situation that the characters were in before they began taking these steps. You may say that “It’s a little known fact that” the cheif hates the feds, but that fact does your readers no good to state it afterward on a blog. Your book would have been far more effective had you actually shown the readers the things that you bring up in this post. As it currently reads to someone picking the book up off the shelf, these characters are reacting in a way that uneducated college students on a mission would react to things. You set the scene in a small town with a racist and bigoted sheriff who is abusing his power. Okay, I can buy that. Just as an FYI, the town I live in is on our third sheriff now because the other two were given the boot for political corruption. The thing is that there are powers above a small town sheriff that you never mentioned any of these people going to about the issue. In your mind they may have been way beyond that - but in your book you did not show it to the reader.

My review was on your book as a stand alone book, not as an addition to your blog, and not as a part of a series. Perhaps these issues will be addressed in your follow up book. I do believe that you have talent as a writer, I just think that as it stands, your arguments as made in the book don’t hold water.

New Abe's Turn Review, and Ignorance of Civil Rights Issues

TimK — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:00:00 -0800

I might as well let the cat out of the bag. I’m preparing a report, entitled “The Most Critical Overlooked Issue in American Government: Our Eroding Civil Rights.” I don’t know when I’ll be ready to release the report, but Ravenskya’s (not her real name, I think) new review of The Conscience of Abe’s Turn has further confirmed my intuition that this is a key issue of which many Americans are ignorant.

I wish I could rate this book higher, because the writing style is very effective and the author has a wonderful flow of words. The tale itself however was a fairly overblown story that my mind could not completely wrap around. [emphasis added]

Now, it doesn’t bother me that a reviewer thought one of the premises of my fictional story stretched her imagination. Having actually done a modicum of research into the legal system, I echo the same sentiments every time I watch an episode of Boston Legal. Because most of what happens in court on that show is so far-fetched as to be fairy tale. The show is actually a morality play on political ideology, not a courtroom drama. But that doesn’t mean I enjoy it any less.

Ravenskya went on to say that members of the (fictional) Committee for a Fairer Future should just let the FBI handle it. “I can’t understand,” she writes, “why a group of professionals who are supposed to be so brilliant are holding protests and playing hippy saboteurs rather than just contacting the Feds and getting their problems solved.” But don’t you think that if there were anything the FBI could do, that Ted would immediately bring them into the picture? (A little known fact, by the way, is that Police Chief Baedes hates the feds, because they always get in the way of his business. So that would be a nice bonus to getting them involved.)

But Ted has no cause to bring the Feds in. What Ravenskya doesn’t seem to understand is that very little that Baedes or his underlings have done is actually against the law. And there’s nothing there that the FBI could act on. Very little would even hold up in a civil-rights lawsuit, because of the scant evidence available. And such lawsuits take years to wade through. Mira might be able to get a few bucks after a years of lawsuit, because Baedes did hit her in the head and knocked her out. But in the meantime, that’s not going to help all of the people being wrongly accused, abused, arrested, and convicted.

Regular readers of this blog and of other sites listed under “The Conscience of America” have read many similar accounts, and their problem with Abe’s Turn (like mine) is quite different. My problem with the story so far is that it’s too mild to be realistic. In reality, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, and even the War on Internet DVD Sharing have created a class of politicians and their enforcers who are effectively above many laws.

More to come…

-TimK