Author: VD

Too late to worry about it now

Now that whites are learning to play the game properly, the Fake American Left is suddenly wants to change the rules again and give up on identity politics.

Identity politics was conceived and executed from the beginning as a movement of depoliticization. Feminism has become severed from class considerations, so that for the most part it has become a reflection of what liberal identitarians themselves like to call “white privilege.” Feminism, like the other identity politics of the moment, is cut off from solidarity with the rest of the world, or if it deals with the rest of the world can only do so on terms that must not invalidate the American version of identity politics.

For example, because all identities are equally sacrosanct, we must not critique other cultures from an Enlightenment perspective; to each his own, and race is destiny, etc. (Which certainly validates the “alt-right,” doesn’t it?) This failure was noted by neoconservatives some decades ago, a breach into which they stepped with a vigorous assertion of nationalism that should have had no place in our polity after the reconsiderations brought about by Vietnam and Watergate. But it happened, just as a perverted form of white patriotism arose to fulfill the vacuum left by liberal rationality because of the constraints of identity politics.

To conclude, identity politics — in all the forms it has shown up, from various localized nationalisms to more ambitious fascism — desires its adherents to present themselves in the most regressive, atavistic, primitive form possible. The kind of political communication identity politics thrives on is based on maximizing emotionalism and minimizing rationality. Therefore, the idea of law that arises when identity politics engenders a reaction is one that severs the natural bonds of community across differences (which is the most ironic yet predictable result of identity politics) and makes of the law an inhuman abstraction.

This depoliticization has gone on so long now, about 30 years, that breaking out of it is inconceivable, since the discourse to do so is no longer accessible. For anyone trained to think outside the confines of identity politics, those who operate within its principles — which manifests, for example, in call-out culture (or at least it did before Trump) — seem incomprehensible, and vice versa. We are different generations divided by unfathomable gaps, and there is no way to bridge them. The situation is like the indoctrination in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, so that only an economic catastrophe that lays waste to everything, resulting from imperial misadventures, can possibly break the logjam. Short of that, we are committed to the dire nihilism of identity politics for the duration of the imperial game.

The irony of someone called “Anis Shivani” worrying about identity politics in America is downright amusing. Identity politics are the rules of the game in all sufficiently multiracial and multireligious societies. Sort out your identity, build your alliances, pass laws that favor your identity, and screw everyone else.

Shivani uses the word “depoliticization” improperly. What he really means is “deideologicization”.

In any event, identity politics have been baked in the cake since 1965. And it is why the #AltRight is inevitable, regardless of whatever name of the identity is eventually established for white American nationalists.

Back to the Jungle?

I think perhaps the Littlest Chickenhawk is taking this whole Israel First thing a little too far. Kind of racist too, isn’t it?

But at least he’s willing to stand up for his right not to fight for his country.

North Korea ups the ante

The North Koreans send a very strong “back off” message to the USA:

North Korea today detonated a hydrogen bomb sparking a powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake amid an ‘escalating’ nuclear crisis.

The terrifying tremor was detected in the northeast of the country where the Punggye-ri test site is located – but was so strong that it shook buildings in China and Russia.

State television claimed the country’s sixth nuclear test – 10 times more powerful than its fifth – was a ‘perfect success’ and could pave the way for a frightening new range of missiles loaded with hydrogen bombs. It added that the underground test – which was directly ordered by leader Kim Jong-un – was a ‘meaningful’ step in completing the country’s nuclear weapons programme.

Following the blast Donald Trump slammed North Korea as a ‘rogue nation’ which is a ‘great threat and embarrassment to China’ – finishing with the thinly-veiled threat: ‘They only understand one thing.’

‘He wrote on Twitter: North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States. North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success. South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!’

This would probably be a very good time to not live anywhere near the East or West Coasts. I’d be astonished if North Korea hasn’t already planted a bomb or two in a Chinese container that is sitting in a US port.

There are no good options here.

Some things don’t change

Mike Glyer reports that someone named Steve J. Wright is “reviewing” A Throne of Bones the way atheists used to do chapter-by-chapter “reviews” of TIA:

Steve J. Wright has assigned himself the quest of reading and blogging about Vox Day’s epic fantasy novel A Throne of Bones and has written half-a-dozen posts this past week. The first is: A Throne of Bones by “Vox Day” – Preamble, on Managing Expectations. Wright doesn’t think much of the writer either as a storyteller or a technician, and all the posts come at the book at an angle similar to this passage in the third post, A Throne of Bones – Chapter 1:

Well.  Basically, in this chapter, Beale is managing to do a little with a lot – his style continues to be ponderous, awkward and clunky, nothing very much happens, and the deficiencies of style lead to the failure of his attempts at characterization – Corvus is clearly meant to be a super-competent military commander, but his laboured and over-long dialogue make him come across as a pompous old windbag instead.

I think that’s the trap – Wright is giving a solid, honest review of something he doesn’t find very interesting. And it’s contagious. When a fanwriter feels contempt for the material he’s discussing, the only way to win is to treat it humorously, because otherwise an audience finds it wearing to keep reading someone taking a superior point of view.

I mentioned this before, and when I did, I was thinking this all reminded me of something else, though. Then, when I saw Glyer’s reference to it, the recollection hit me, almost entirely unlike a cheetah. What it reminded me of is Michael Moorcock’s nominal critique of Tolkien, although, as we know, Moorcock was really just whining about the fact that nearly everyone who is literate prefers Tolkien’s books to his own tedious, poorly-plotted, scrawny little “epics”. And even those who aren’t literate would definitely prefer a Lord of the Rings movie to an Elric one.

Can you even imagine the latter? Ninety minutes of an albino, probably played by Idris Elba these days, repeatedly alternating between self-serving betrayals and self-pitying bouts of weeping. Moorcock’s work didn’t even rise to the level of Harry freaking Potter, never mind the lasting epic greatness of Tolkien.

The sort of prose most often identified with “high” fantasy is the prose of the nursery-room. It is a lullaby; it is meant to soothe and console. It is mouth-music. It is frequently enjoyed not for its tensions but for its lack of tensions. It coddles; it makes friends with you; it tells you comforting lies….

The Lord of the Rings is much more deep-rooted in its infantilism than a good many of the more obviously juvenile books it influenced. It is Winnie-the-Pooh posing as an epic. If the Shire is a suburban garden, Sauron and his henchmen are that old bourgeois bugaboo, the Mob – mindless football supporters throwing their beer-bottles over the fence the worst aspects of modern urban society represented as the whole by a fearful, backward-yearning class for whom “good taste” is synonymous with “restraint” (pastel colours, murmured protest) and “civilized” behaviour means “conventional behaviour in all circumstances”. This is not to deny that courageous characters are found in The Lord of the Rings, or a willingness to fight Evil (never really defined), but somehow those courageous characters take on the aspect of retired colonels at last driven to write a letter to The Times and we are not sure – because Tolkien cannot really bring himself to get close to his proles and their satanic leaders – if Sauron and Co. are quite as evil as we’re told. After all, anyone who hates hobbits can’t be all bad.

You can always tell when gammas with literary ambitions have it in for an author that normal people like. They hone in on the “prose” and the “style” like lasers, because literary style is a sufficiently nebulous and subjective subject to let them natter on about it without risking being disproven. I’ve only seen one of his posts – I have no use for criticism that is not substantive – and saw he had already committed two major howlers with regards to military history and the use of magic. He’d be wise to stick to complaining about the style, which no one has ever claimed is any better than “workmanlike”. Including me.

But let the critics natter on, by all means. This is a big step forward from simply being ignored. The more hate from these circles, the better. I expect that in another few years, they’ll start hedging their bets by starting to mention a few of the positive aspects that presently manage to escape their collective notice. And it would certainly be ironic, to say nothing of highly amusing, if Mr. Wright’s take eventually proved to be as much of an obvious joke as Mr. Moorcock’s.

What’s interesting about all this is that someone who shall remain nameless to protect his reputation, but is a Respected and Well-Known Name in science fiction and fantasy circles, told me some years ago that he expected I would eventually become a leading fantasy writer. I’m not there yet, to be sure, but the notion is considerably less ridiculous than it appeared at the time. I have to admit, I scoffed at it myself, not out of humility, but out of a recognition of my stylistic limitations. Of course, since then, I’ve learned that style is only one of the four major components of a novel, and it is far from the most important one. No one reads Eco or Murakami or Tolkien for their literary styles. If I’m very fortunate, perhaps one day someone will write a hate-review called “The Dichotomy of Day” about me in The Atlantic instead of merely posting it on a personal blog.

Anyhow, should you wish to judge my “ponderous, awkward and clunky” style for yourself, Summa Elvetica & Other Stories is still free.

Black vs Blue and Green

More unexpected consequences of the NFL anthem protests:

There is new fallout from the fierce debate over Cleveland Browns players kneeling during the national anthem. Cleveland safety forces have backed out of a plan to hold a large flag on the field for the opening game.

A dozen Browns players created a firestorm during a recent preseason game by not standing during the anthem. They created the largest demonstration in the NFL during the anthem since former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick started his protest more than a year ago.

Some police officers and paramedics are doing something about it. The Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association and ILA Local 1975, representing the city’s dispatchers, EMTs and paramedics, said the Browns came to them weeks ago, and the team wanted city safety forces to hold the flag on the field for the opening game.

EMS union president Daniel Nemeth said it sounded great until a group of Browns players took a knee during the anthem.

“This hit home with me. I am a veteran, an 8-year veteran with the U.S. Marine Corps. So, to disrespect the flag by taking a knee is not something I was going to be a part of,” Nemeth said.

We tracked down police union president Steve Loomis out of state at a police convention.

“I’m here at a national police convention, and soon as they hear that I’m from Cleveland, the first question is ‘What about those stinking Browns?’” Loomis said. “So if the ownership of the Browns and the league are going to allow that type of stuff to happen, and then come to us and say,  ‘We want you to help us with the flag,’ that’s hypocritical. We’re not gonna participate.”

At this rate, the sports media should stop worrying about NFL owners ever hiring Colin Kaepernick -which they will never do anyhow – and start worrying about them having him disappeared.

The trials of dark-lording

Nick Flor-ProfessorF‏Verified account @ProfessorF
 The formula for success, has always been: work hard, do excellent work, respect others. Do that and you will overcome most biases.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
I find a formula of work hard, do excellent work, behead your enemies, drink their blood, and pile their skulls in the garden works for me.

Spacebunny Day‏ @Spacebunnyday
Yeah, well, it doesn’t work for me.  We have guests coming for a bbq tomorrow – go clean up the garden.

They never tell you about this sort of thing in dark lord school.

The Left begins to wake up

About the potential problems posted by the Big Social Media monopolies:

We’re basically too small for Google to care about. So I wouldn’t say we’ve had any bad experiences with Google in the sense of Google trying to injure us or use its power against us. What we’ve experienced is a little different. Google is so big and so powerful that even when it’s trying to do something good, it can be dangerous and frightening.

Here’s an example.

With the events of recent months and years, Google is apparently now trying to weed out publishers that are using its money streams and architecture to publish hate speech. Certainly you’d probably be unhappy to hear that Stormfront was funded by ads run through Google. I’m not saying that’s happening. I’m just giving you a sense of what they are apparently trying to combat. Over the last several months we’ve gotten a few notifications from Google telling us that certain pages of ours were penalized for ‘violations’ of their ban for hate speech. When we looked at the pages they were talking about they were articles about white supremacist incidents. Most were tied to Dylann Roof’s mass murder in Charleston.

Now in practice all this meant was that two or three old stories about Dylann Roof could no longer run ads purchased through Google. I’d say it’s unlikely that loss to TPM amounted to even a cent a month. Totally meaningless. But here’s the catch. The way these warnings work and the way these particular warnings were worded, you get penalized enough times and then you’re blacklisted.

Now, certainly you’re figuring we could contact someone at Google and explain that we’re not publishing hate speech and racist violence. We’re reporting on it. Not really. We tried that. We got back a message from our rep not really understanding the distinction and cheerily telling us to try to operate within the no hate speech rules. And how many warnings until we’re blacklisted? Who knows?

If we were cut off, would that be Adexchange (the ads) or DoubleClick for Publishers (the road) or both? Who knows?

If the first stopped we’d lose a big chunk of money that wouldn’t put us out of business but would likely force us to retrench. If we were kicked off the road more than half of our total revenue would disappear instantly and would stay disappeared until we found a new road – i.e., a new ad serving service or technology. At a minimum that would be a devastating blow that would require us to find a totally different ad serving system, make major technical changes to the site to accommodate the new system and likely not be able to make as much from ads ever again. That’s not including some unknown period of time – certainly weeks at least – in which we went with literally no ad revenue.

Needless to say, the impact of this would be cataclysmic and could easily drive us out of business.

Now it’s never happened. And this whole scenario stems from what is at least a well-intentioned effort not to subsidize hate speech and racist groups. Again, it hasn’t happened. So in some sense the cataclysmic scenario I’m describing is as much a product of my paranoia as something Google could or might do. But when an outside player has that much power, often acts arbitrarily (even when well-intentioned) and is almost impossible to communicate with, a significant amount of paranoia is healthy and inevitable.

I give this example only to illustrate the way that Google is so powerful and so all-encompassing that it can actually do great damage unintentionally.

It’s interesting to see that the Left is beginning to get paranoid about Big Social Media, even though they’re not being targeted by it. Yet.

Go f— yourselves, Fake News

They are REALLY not going to like Senator Rock:

Kid Rock’s response to a watchdog group accusing him of violating a federal election law was classic Kid Rock — ” … go f— yourselves.”

The group Common Cause says the Detroit musician violated the law by declaring himself a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan but not registering his candidacy or reporting campaign contributions. They filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission and also asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate whether the musician —whose real name is Robert Ritchie — has violated election law.

Ritchie dismissed the allegations, issuing the following statement, “I am starting to see reports from the misinformed press and the fake news on how I am in violation of breaking campaign law. #1: I have still not officially announced my candidacy. #2: See #1 and go f— yourselves.”

I’d say he’s off to an EXCELLENT start.

Complete the Grand Slog

The response to the free days for ATOB and ASOS was so great – and the consequent effects on the sales of Castalia House books and KU reads were so substantial – that we’ve elected to make Summa Elvetica & Other Stories free today and all weekend.

In not entirely unrelated news, I’m pleased to be able to announce that Castalia House had its second straight record month in August. The interesting thing is that unlike in July, there was no one monster performer, just a lot of interest across the broad range of our books. This tends to indicate that more people are discovering more of our books, perhaps through Kindle Unlimited, perhaps through the Daily Meme Wars, or perhaps through conventional word of mouth.

Regardless, we appreciate your staunch support, and we are working harder than ever on bringing you high-quality fiction and non-fiction books.

Excerpt from THE WARDOG’S COIN.

FAR BELOW THE rock I crouched behind, the goblins moved through the mountain pass in loose, meandering columns, stacked fifteen or twenty troops wide. It was hard to count exactly how many of the enemy light infantry there was, since the cruel whips of the orcs that drove them mercilessly onward wasn’t able to keep them marching in no sort of recognizable formation.

We’d twice beaten the blasted breeds back from the very pass they was marching through now, but once they’d managed to haul up their catapults to where they could drop rocks on our heads, the capitaine gave us the order to fall back and join the rest of the elf king’s army.

“How many do you make?” I asked the elf perched on a large boulder above me. He was a scout from the Silverbows, one of the king’s elite troops, and he had eyes so keen a hawk might envy them. Today he and me was on the same side. Problem was, tomorrow might be a different story.

“No more than eight thousand.” He spoke good Savonnais, with only a hint of elf. “They don’t matter. I think the problem lies with what follows.”

I squinted, trying to make out what the large, black objects following the goblin columns below might be. The shapes was too big as to be orcs or goblin wolf-riders, but there was a lot of them, and they moved in an even less-disciplined array than the gobbos.

“I can’t see what they are.”

“Big pigs,” said the elf grimly. “Orcs ride them. Like wargs, only not so fast.”

“Warboars?”

“Is that how you call them? We say pigs of war. Very big, very fierce. I think maybe three hundred.”

Damn it all to hell and back! If heavy cavalry wasn’t the very last thing we needed to see at the moment, it was pretty bloody close. Three hundred godforsaken warboars!

Ever seen a pig? I don’t mean a nice little piggie with a pink arse and a curly tail, I mean a big old he-boar, with black, bristled hair, sharp yellow tusks, and a giant hump on his back. Now, imagine one twice the size and three times as mean, not a whole lot taller than a donkey but a damn sight wider and weighing more than a horse. Then strap iron armor across the front, sharpen the tusks, and throw an overmuscled breed carrying a greatsword on his back. That’s a warboar.

King Everbright don’t have nothing in his army as can stand against a charge from three hundred of those monsters, except for the Company, and to be honest, even we can’t expect to do much more than get run over. The blue-bloods of Savondir and their men-at-arms might laugh at the boar riders before skewering all their mounts on lances and throwing them on the firepit for dinner, but us wardogs don’t have lances. Or plate. Or pretty warhorses.

I climbed down from the rock on which I’d been sitting and shouldered my pack. It was going to be a long walk down to the camp, so I had to get moving if I hoped to get there before night.

“What will you tell your capitaine?” The elf scout stared at me with his weird yellow-green eyes.

“That there’s an avalanche of big pigs about to fall on our heads.”

“What will he do?”

“I don’t know. Probably send a few of the younger lads home with messages for our kin. I suppose most of them will be last wills and testaments.”

“He will stay and fight? He will not run?”

I laughed, but if it came out more bitterly than I’d meant, the elf didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he just didn’t care. “I suppose it would be a particular regiment of archers who’d be told to take us out if we tried to skedaddle, wouldn’t it?”

The elf didn’t confirm or deny that the Silverbows had been ordered to turn us into human pincushions if we attempted to withdraw our services without warning. But when his cat-slit eyes narrowed, I was pretty sure he caught my drift.

I shrugged.

“Nah, he wouldn’t run anyway. Contract’s a contract. We get paid, we stick around and fight.”

The elf nodded. “It is good to know not all men are without honor. I wish you many kills before you fall.”

I’ll bet you do, I thought. Sod honor! Especially since all those right honorable elves will be off escorting His Royal Elven Arse to safety while we get ourselves trampled into a bloody muck by oversized hogs.

But it wasn’t the Silverbow’s fault, and he was a decent enough sort for an elf, so I waved him farewell and set off down the rocky mountain trail. It wasn’t going to be fun trying to make it before sunset without breaking my neck, but it sure as hell beat what the Company was going to be facing in a day or three.

Mailvox: so just give up and die?

I have to confess, I find the defeatism of some of the critics of my advice to scratch and claw and stay occupied with genuine work to be more than a little mystifying.

Actually, I’ve been reading this whole comments section as well as the original post in fucking amazement, mouth agape.

For someone like VD who espouses this Lex Luthor type UHIQ evil genius his advice is comically out of date, but not surprising. When you run in rarified air feet usually not touching the ground this is not uncommon.

I know highly qualified people scratching out a living and just getting by who had this whole “keep your chin up, be strong, blah blah” mentality and it has been dragging on for half a decade or more in some cases.

Those days, quite frankly, are over. In the land of the eternal victim and the affirmative action hire your “just be busy and take any job” fantasy is about as relevant as thinking you are the most qualified candidate actually matters.

It is like these people are living in some odd alternate reality where they can -clearly- see the pozzing of the culture at large, but somehow think that in the job climate, there is still something resembling sanity, rationality, or logic.

Odd that… this is one of the worst articles I’ve ever seen here actually.

The thing is, in every single case, the individual criticizing the advice completely fails to suggest an alternative. Crime? Welfare? Suicide? More education? Kidnapping the relatives of HR executives?

I’m genuinely curious if they actually have anything to offer, or if my suspicions are correct and they are simply young, college-educated gammas who have no idea how to find or create a job. The fact that this particular gentleman is talking about “highly qualified people”, “most qualified candidate”, and “affirmative action hire” tends to indicate that he does not understand the distinction between corporate paper-pushing and actual work.

Look, we Generation Xers know what it is like to be prepared for one labor environment only to discover that all of one’s preparation has proven to be useless and misguided and generally inapplicable. The situation is what it is. So, what are you going to do about it? Cry, complain, and give up? Or make your own way?