Donald Trump’s victory reads to me like a realignment election, a historic break with the way interest and demographic groups have behaved in the U.S. in my lifetime. Yet, Democrats, you so far seem to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Indeed, if I were Donald Trump I would be cackling with glee at your post-election behavior, which seems ideally calculated to lock Trump in for a second term before he has been sworn in for the first.
Stop this. Your country needs you. I’m not joking and I’m not concern-trolling. The wailing and the gnashing of teeth and the denial of reality have to end. In the rest of this essay I’m not going to talk about right and wrong and ideology, I’m going to talk about the brutal practical politics of what you have to do to climb out of the hole you are in.
We need to start with an unsparing assessment of that hole.
First, your ability to assemble a broad-based national coalition has collapsed. Do not be fooled into thinking otherwise by your popular vote “win”; that majority came entirely from the West Coast metroplex and disguises a large-scale collapse in popular support everywhere else in the U.S. Trump even achieved 30-40% support in blue states where he didn’t spend any money.
County-by-county psephological maps show that your base is now confined to two major coastal enclaves and a handful of university towns. Only 4 of 50 states have both a Democratic-controlled legislature and a Democratic governor. In 2018 that regionalization is going to get worse, not better; you will be defending 25 seats in areas where Trump took the popular vote, while the Republicans have to defend only 8 where Clinton won.
Your party leadership is geriatric, decades older than the average for their Republican counterparts. Years of steady losses at state level, masked by the personal popularity of Barack Obama, have left you without a bench to speak of – little young talent and basically no seasoned Presidential timber under retirement age. The fact that Joseph Biden, who will be 78 for the next Election Day, is being seriously mooted as the next Democratic candidate, speaks volumes – none of them good.
Your ideological lock on the elite media and show business has flipped from a powerful asset to a liability. Trump campaigned against that lock and won; his tactics can be and will be replicated. Worse, a self-created media bubble insulated you from grasping the actual concerns of the American public so completely that you didn’t realize the shit you were in until election night.
There is considerably more, all of which will be completely lost on Democrats wailing about Russian hackers, Putin, incest, racists, and Nazis.
The Trump administration-to-be sends a clear signal to the media that if they refuse to cover the President-elect and his team in a reasonably respectful manner, they will be cast into outer darkness:
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s inner circle will be cutting off access to David Bradley’s The Atlantic magazine after a disgusting tweet by one of its new hires, Julia Ioffe, a highly-placed source has confirmed to GotNews.
Ioffe was fired from Politico ahead of schedule after posting the following obscene tweet, which has since been deleted but was archived here:
“This was not a first-time thing,” the Trump source told GotNews, pointing to “conspiracy theories” written by Atlantic senior editor David Frum about Trump world’s ties to Russia. “It’s a far left-wing magazine that’s about as relevant as the New Republic. We’re getting pretty tired of them calling us anti-Semites while they write hit pieces against our Jewish staffers.”
The corrupt minds of the SJW Left always project their own filth upon others. This is the 3rd Law of SJW. It would also appear that the neocon journey from the Left into “conservatism” and back again is now complete.
Wild Man keeps blithely repeating the same argumentative nonsense over and over again despite the fact that he can’t even construct a basic syllogism or correctly understand what Western civilization is.
VD – you said – “Give it up, Wild Man. I already told you that you’re full of it. You keep trying to work your false narrative of Western civilization being based on equality in there, which a) is not true, and, b) the Alt-Right openly opposes.”
VD – you also said – “You’re not (mystified). There are no deep contradictions, you’re simply either a) a liar, or b) a stubborn idiot.”
VD – In all fairness, I don’t think anything I said implies that I am lying and therefore trolling and baiting around supposed mystification. My mystification with regards to fully groking the alt-right (particularly your conception of it) is real – and I am making a real effort to try and understand your position on this – and by way of this effort I have observed some deep contradictions ….. and these are the source of my mystification (nothing weird going on here with me – just straight forward rational discussion is what I am hoping for).
I also think you are wrong about anything I said implying I’m a stubborn idiot (but they all say that – right?) – but I try to be open minded and we’ll see – I’m always hoping to learn something new, and maybe you will point me in that direction, but “idiot”! …. you know what they say about extraordinary claims …. but hey maybe you will show me something worthy of a face palm slap sufficient of the “idiot” voice-over. If so I will do my best to admit it!
Here are the reasons for my counter-claims:
1)Your claim that I keep trying to work in a particular narrative around western civilization, namely that it is partly based on some sense of equality, is true in general, with respect to many of the comments I have posted on previous threads – i.e. – I do believe that as per the 4 underlying precepts of the western egalitarian as I have defined, particularly as per precepts #1 + #2 ….. some sense of existential ontological equality does arise, by way of each man and woman enjoying, or perhaps suffering if you like, the same existential and ontological conditions around the operation of self-agency – namely the belief in the ever present power to choose, and the belief in the implied personal responsibilities that entails.
It’s not a claim, it’s a straightforward observation that Wild Man keeps saying the same thing over and over, then asserting a nonexistent contradiction on my part on the basis of his own false narrative, which action, you will note, he has now admitted. It is apparent that he is a low midwit enchanted by the fact that he actually has an idea. This is exactly the sort of behavior Mike Cernovich warned against, and is an object lesson in the importance of jettisoning bad ideas.
Wild Man doesn’t realize that he’s defined 2+2 as being equal to 37, then attempted to criticize everyone else’s math on that basis. Worse, he’s attempting to claim everyone who is doing math correctly is contradicting themselves, which is not possible since no one accepts the idea that 2+2=37 or that there exists a sense of existential ontological equality intrinsic to the West.
What part of “equality does not exist in ANY meaningful and material sense” is hard for the moron to grasp? If he had the ability to construct, or deconstruct, a logical syllogism, he would attempt to demonstrate that a) equality does exist, and, b) this equality is integral to Western civilization. He would fail, of course, since both statements are false, but at least he would stop subjecting every reader of this blog, and worse, me, to this interminable, nonsensical salad of words he observably does not understand.
Note to the midwits: using big words that impress you when others use them does not make you correct, convincing, or intellectual, particularly when you use them incorrectly.
In a previous thread I have outlined these 4 underlying precepts of this conception of the western egalitarian, which I could copy and paste here again on this thread if you like. You say it is not true (you are contending that there is no such sense of human equality – I discern you judge this as a fallacy) but you have not yet engaged as to precisely why the common existential ontological conditions of personhood do not support some sense of equality, so …. how can I possibly know your mind on this, if you don’t engage on this topic and tell me? I assume your judgment as to the fallacious nature of my contention also conditions your conception of the Alt-Right. As such I trust you now see that this absolves me of the charge of lying about my mystification about your conception of the alt-right ….. now implying perhaps, that the charge, by default, is instead one of “stubborn idiot”.
Oh Sweet Darwin, no, you’ve already done enough copy and pasting here. And no, you clearly understand perfectly well what the 16 Points mean, you’re just too determined to cling to your egalitarian nonsense to accept them. This mewling “I’m so mystified, please prove the obvious to me or I’ll post another thousand-word screed that says the same damn thing” is contemptible. So, I have concluded that the dichotomy was false and you happen to be both a) a liar, and b) a stubborn idiot.
The conditions of personhood are too trivial to support any sense of equality that is relevant to Western civilization, and moreover, have never served as a basis for any form of observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual equality in the West, or anywhere else. The fact that corporations are legal persons in the West should alone suffice to demonstrate the fact that Wild Man’s “common existential ontological conditions of personhood” argument is a complete non-starter.
OK – You think I am a stubborn idiot for reasons that I am apparently too dense to see, I guess you are implying. Well humor an implied underling (by intellectual brilliance standards) then, good sir. Please now address my quandary. My prior discussion with respect to the underlying precepts #1 + #2 of the western egalitarian, as defined, implies some sense of existential ontological equality does arise by way of the condition of personhood. People are the same in some sense. The necessary conditions of personhood implies a sense of categorical equality. What are the necessary conditions of personhood? We all are going to die. Well prior to adulthood we all come to know this existential fact. We all are faced with the same challenge ….. as to grok the best way to conduct one’s life. We each sense and undertake this challenge because of our common human belief in self-agency and the personal responsibility so implied. Where is this conception of the categorical equality of the existential ontological nature of personhood fallacious?
This is false on its face, and contains several false foundations as well. Corporations don’t die, and yet they are legally recognized persons. Human embryos and fetuses do die, and they are not. Dogs and pigs and monkeys and plants are all going to die too, and they are not considered persons either. Many humans do not believe in self-agency or in a subsequent implication of personal responsibility; the current state of cognitive science specifically denies even the theoretical possibility of conscious self-agency. The conception of the categorical equality of the existential ontological nature of personhood is observably fallacious from start to finish, which is one reason why it is not, and has never been, recognized in any legal system in the history of the West.
Your more direct claim, that the particular narrative around western civilization that I have implied, namely that it is partly based on some sense of equality (as discussed in #2 above), is actually OPENLY opposed by the Alt-Right, is also, more directly, mystifying, given #(15) of your outline of the Alt-Right principles (i.e. – The Alt Right does not believe in the general supremacy of any race, nation, people, or sub-species. Every race, nation, people, and human sub-species has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and possesses the sovereign right to dwell unmolested in the native culture it prefers.) Well what is the negation of supremacy so implied? Given that you stated principle #(15) in terms of racial/national existential preservation – does it not imply the negation of supremacy so implied, is some sense of equality (given what we know about the operation of darwinian evolution)?, and furthermore via the paraphrase of the embrace of the scientodific (alt-right principle #8) I provided in comment #72 above, the racial/national cultural profile is obviously contingent on the the make-up of the in-group individuals ….. and as such, the sense of darwinian existential equality implied by the principle of racial/national existential preservation as implied by Alt-Right principle #(15), is contingent on the make-up of the individuals ……. now what precise qualities expressed at the individual level might well account for said cultural darwinian existential equality implied by the principle of racial/national existential preservation? – well the categorical equality of the existential ontological nature of personhood is certainly a good candidate to account for that – is it not? Or, more succinctly ……the spirit of which can be summed up as “all men are created equal in the eyes of God”, or the spirit of which could also be summed as “perhaps even God knows not (and certainly no man can know) the future existential conditions of nations and races”. So VD – please tell me precisely how I am a stubborn idiot by way of being too dense to see how your conception of the Alt-Right is OPENLY opposed to some sense of human equality?
Wild Man is an idiot because a declaration of an absence of belief in SUPREMACY is not synonymous with a declaration of any sense of SAMENESS or EQUALITY. Quite the contrary, in fact, as the further from sameness one goes, the harder it is to even compare two things. What is supreme, a penguin or a satellite? It’s a category error to even ask the question! Now consider the intrinsic dishonesty of the language to which he is forced to resort to even begin to try making his idiotic case.
“does it not imply” (no)
“the sense of darwinian existential equality implied” (there is no such thing, ergo it cannot imply anything)
“might well account for” (and yet does not)
“is certainly a good candidate” (it can’t be, since it doesn’t exist)
“could also be summed as” (no, it can’t, and it isn’t)
Very well, Wild Man. You are a stubborn idiot who is too dense to see that you have constructed a false narrative, claimed that because that false narrative can be imagined, it actually exists and thereby negates a vast range of material observations which have led me, and many others, to conclude that equality is an abstract concept which does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.
That being said, I will grant you that the common existential ontological conditions of personhood support equality in an imaginary sense. In your head, if nowhere else.
Now …… if you happen to now agree with the conceptions around some sense of human equality that I have now repeatedly outlined, here and in prior threads, (which aren’t my original conceptions in any event – these are simply the western egalitarian principles of the enlightenment period – wasn’t it John Locke that fleshed out these ideas?) …… then ….VD some of your conclusions don’t follow.
I don’t agree with any of the conceptions Wild Man has repeatedly outlined. And Western civilization long preceded the Enlightenment, nor does John Locke or any other Enlightenment philosopher define Western civilization, which is why the entire argument has been so prodigiously and obviously stupid from the start.
You had your shot, Wild Man. Now give it up and stop trying to argue your nonsensical point. If you are still mystified, then you will simply have to remain that way, because I have zero interest in continuing to explain the observable and the obvious to you.
I trust this explains why I am seldom inclined to do more than simply tell midwits and those of normal intelligence that they are wrong, and if egregiously so, stupid. My curt dismissals are not evidence that I cannot dismantle their arguments and demonstrate in detail why they are incorrect, they are instead an indication that doing so is so trivially obvious and easy that only long and painful experience of MPAI has made it possible for me to believe that it could ever be necessary.
As we reported earlier, Trump sat down with top tech executives, including several of his sharpest critics, to mend fences after a divisive election in which virtually all of Silicon Valley backed Hillary Clinton. Trump was heading into hostile territory – with the exception of PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley shunned the New York billionaire during the presidential campaign, throwing their weight behind his Democratic rival Clinton.
The tech talks, convened by Trump, bought together numerous CEOs such as Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Larry Page of Alphabet (Google) and Brian Krzanich of Intel, among others. In addition to Trump nemesis Jeff Bezos, also on the guest list are Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Oracle chief executive Safra Catz.
We now know the answer why Dorsey was MIA: according to Politico, Twitter was told it was “bounced” from Wednesday’s meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation.
Play fair or be frozen out. The God-Emperor hasn’t even Ascended yet and he’s already laying down the law. It’s going to be interesting to see how the Trump administration wields the IRS once it assumes control.
Officials at FBI headquarters instructed its New York field office to continue its corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation following the election of Republican candidate Donald Trump, according to a former senior law enforcement official.
The instructions ordered agents to “go forward” with their ongoing inquiry into the Clinton Foundation which is focusing on issues of corruption and money laundering, according to the source.
“There were no instructions to shut it down, to discontinue or to stand down on the investigation, but to continue its work,” the former official told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.
Wanted: Columnists to say nice things about Donald Trump. Must be able to make cogent arguments in favor of the president-elect’s policies, appointees and statements. Experience preferred but not required.
It’s not an actual want ad, but it might as well be one. As they discovered during the long campaign season, the nation’s newspapers and major digital news sites — the dreaded mainstream media — are facing a shortage of people able, or more likely willing, to write opinion columns supportive of the president-elect.
Major newspapers, from The Washington Post to the New York Times, have struggled to find and publish pro-Trump columns for months. So have regional ones, such as the Des Moines Register and the Arizona Republic, which has a long history of supporting Republican candidates.
The newspapers have plenty of conservative writers, but that’s where the problem begins. Trump, who has defied traditional left-right categories, has offered something for both liberals and conservatives to dislike. The latter never believed that Trump was a true conservative; the former were revolted by his rhetoric from the start.
Hence, he has had few friends on the nation’s op-ed pages.
A case in point: The New York Times’ regular center-right columnists, Ross Douthat and David Brooks, never got behind Trump. And despite recruiting prominent conservative figures such as Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson to write guest columns, the result was largely the same. Erickson called Trump “indefensible.” The best Beck could do was to say, “Mr. Trump is not Hitler.”
It was much the same with The Post’s regular lineup of conservative voices — George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, Jennifer Rubin and Michael Gerson; none offered much support for Trump. Regular Post contributors such as Marc A. Thiessen and Ed Rogers tended to knock Hillary Clinton more than they praised Trump.
“We struggled to find voices that could advocate for Donald Trump’s ideas,” said James Bennet, the Times’ editorial-page editor. “It was really unusual. It didn’t help that the conservative intelligentsia lined up against him.” But Bennet says Trump’s campaign contributed to the imbalance: “He didn’t have the people around him who were prepared to put together his arguments” for publication.
Lynn Hicks, the Des Moines Register’s opinion editor, found a parallel at his newspaper, the largest in the swing state that wound up going for Trump. “Given that almost all of our Republican leadership in Iowa supported Trump, I kept waiting for [supportive op-ed] pieces to arrive,” Hicks said. “I’m still waiting.”
The Arizona Republic’s syndicated and staff opinion writers were all “stridently anti-Trump,” said Phil Boas, director of the paper’s editorial department. “In a normal presidential election, we would have seen a strong mix of pro-con views for Republican and Democrat candidates,” he said, “but the Republican civil war turned a lot of traditional voices on the right into opponents of the GOP nominee. . . . A number of pro-Trump readers accused us of betraying our state and its conservative ideals.”
Dear Mr. Farhi,
I am a Trump-supporting columnist. I correctly predicted both his nomination and his eventual victory. I have a daily blog that gets traffic of nearly 4 million monthly pageviews. I have been been a regular columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, and have been nationally syndicated twice, by Chronicle Features and by Universal Press Syndicate. I have published over 500 weekly columns, and according to Amazon, I am one of the bestselling authors of political philosophy alive.
I shall eagerly await what can only be the inevitable offer of a regular column in the Washington Post.
With regards, Vox Day
I also sent an email to the relevant editor. I figure this will happen right around the time Mike Cernovich launches his show on NBC, Milo is elected Queen of England, and George R. R. Martin finishes A Song of Ice and Fire.
Plight of the Funny Female…. When I learned all of this, I immediately ran into the living room and asked my boyfriend if it’s important to him that his sexual partners are funny.
“Apparently not,” he said.
Ouch! But also, that’s so funny! Ugh.
* * *
Once, a guy and I spent several months in romantic no-man’s land, trying to decide if we liked each other. My issue with him was that he took me out for dinner at a fancy place and only ordered chocolate milk. I thought his issue was that there was another girl.
I was wrong:
“I just don’t get you!” he exclaimed one day when we were on a walk. “You’re pretty, but you’re like … goofy. It makes no sense.”
It’s depressing that for many women who aren’t professional comedians, the most valuable social currency is beauty—or worse, “being sweet.” In his infamous Vanity Fair piece about why women aren’t funny, Christopher Hitchens presents humor as an essential tool men can deploy to break a woman’s defenses:
If you can stimulate her to laughter … well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression.
Women can also stimulate people to laughter—not just for the purpose Hitchens had in mind, but to make a new friend, or to make an old one feel better. To impress a boss or a boyfriend’s parents. To lean in, for cryin’ out loud. If funniness is an implement of power, women deserve access to it, too.If we acknowledge that these prejudices exist—that men’s humor is encouraged at the expense of women’s—is there anything we can do about it? Buss is skeptical that human desire can be molded; that a stern PSA or even a shift in social mores could encourage men to seek out women who are witty rather than pretty. Entrenched beliefs that are ugly and passé—like racism—persist even when people disavow them. Men’s desire to be the Kings of Relationship Comedy, meanwhile, isn’t even frowned upon.
Hone, from the University of Missouri, is more optimistic. If humankind decides that women’s natural zaniness should be set free, mankind should start to ask funnier women out for drinks. And women could stop dating men who don’t laugh at their jokes.
“Just because a trait has served an adaptive purpose does not mean we should accept it,” she said. “I like to think that there’s hope for all the funny, single ladies out there.”
Translation: Me think me pretty, funny, and smart! Why come no men want me? And isn’t it terrible that men prefer sweet, pretty women? They should prefer unattractive bitches so that in time the human race will genetically devolve to the point that I’ll look like a charming supermodel in comparison!
Steve Sailer’s First Law of Female Journalism: The most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.
Also, with very few exceptions, female comedians aren’t even funny. And that’s even when one mentally gives a bonus to the rare female comedian who is capable of cracking what we will generously term “a joke” without a) talking solely about herself or b) making any reference to her ever-so-hilarious genitals.
The answer to why women are not funny is rooted in philosophy. Women are more solipsistic than men, and most humor is found outside of reference to the self.
The Black Friday 1+1 sale was so successful that we’ve decided to do it again, only this time there is no limit on the number of ebooks you can get. If you buy 20 Castalia print editions, we’ll send you the 20 different ebooks you want. The only caveats are:
The print sales have to be from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Both hardcovers and paperbacks are eligible.
A SEA OF SKULLS is not an eligible ebook selection UNLESS you buy a print edition of A THRONE OF BONES. The extended edition of ASOS will not be provided to those acquiring ASOS as a bonus copy.
The bonus copy version of THE NINE LAWS will not include the chapter-heading images.
All ebooks sent out will be DRM-free epub. If you prefer Kindle or some other format, just download Calibre and convert it. It takes five seconds.
Kindle Select ebooks are not eligible due to Amazon’s restrictions on non-Amazon distribution. A list of the eligible non-KDP Select ebooks is below.
It’s pretty simple. Order one or more print books from Amazon or B&N today, December 14th. Email a copy of the invoice dated 12/14/2016 with 1+1 in the subject. Specify the non-Kindle Select ebooks you want. Give the print books as gifts and keep the ebooks for yourself.
The prestigious University of Oxford wants students to replace “she” and “he” with the more gender-neutral pronoun “ze.”
The university’s behavior code states that using the wrong pronoun for a transgender person is considered an offense, and a new leaflet distributed by the student union supposedly aims to cut down on hurt feelings and discrimination by encouraging students to use “ze” instead, the Independent reports.oxford
British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell applauded the move.
“It is a positive thing to not always emphasize gender divisions and barriers,” he told the Daily Mail.
“It is good to have gender-neutral pronouns for those who want them but it shouldn’t be compulsory,” Tatchell said. “This issue isn’t about being politically correct or censoring anyone. It’s about acknowledging the fact of changing gender identities and respecting people’s right to not define themselves as male or female.”
“Giving people the ‘ze’ option is a thoughtful, considerate move,” he said.
The change suggested by the Oxford’s student union follows a trend of schools moving toward more “gender inclusive” language to describe students who don’t want to be labeled male or female.
The University of Tennessee’s Office for Diversity and Inclusion issued a list of suggested gender-neutral pronouns for students that included “ze,” as well as other terms like “xe,” “hir,” “zir,” “xem,” and “wyr” to identify transgender students that created a public firestorm, The Tennessean reports.
Officials later removed the guidance from the university’s website amid the backlash, according to EAGnews.
In England, Cambridge University is also moving toward more “inclusive” language, and student welfare officer Sophie Buck told The Sunday Times student union events there “start with a speaker introducing themselves using a gender neutral pronoun.
“It’s part of a drive to make the union intersectional,” she said.
Remember, this is all entirely predictable. It is the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence on display: No institution can effectively serve two different functions. The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.
The public schools can no longer educate, so people are turning to homeschooling. The universities can no longer provide liberal arts educations, so people are becoming technology-assisted autodidacts. The banks no longer loan, the state and local governments no longer provide basic public services, the military does not defend the borders, the newspapers no longer provide news, the television networks no longer entertain, and the corporations are increasingly unable to provide employment.
Even as the institutions have been invaded and coopted in the interests of social justice, they have been rendered unable to fulfill their primary functions. This is the great internal contradiction that the SJWs will never be able to positively resolve, just as the Soviet communists were never able to resolve the contradiction of socialist calculation that brought down their economy and their empire 69 years after Ludwig von Mises first pointed it out. One might call it the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence; no man can serve two masters and no institution can effectively serve two different functions. The more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.
There is no point trying to debate about what the purpose of a university is any longer. The public should stop funding them, their assets should be seized and distributed to the public, and new institutions will rise up to take their place. Nothing of value will be lost in the process, because they’re already not educating anyone anyhow.
It’s fascinating to see how quickly allowing women to attend the elite universities destroyed an institution that was centuries old. One would think someone, somewhere, would eventually notice that the same pattern is playing out again, and again, and again in a wide variety of institutions, from the men’s clubs to the churches.
CORRECTION: Apparently the situation at Oxford is not QUITE as bad as the article makes it look. It’s only the Oxford Student Union that has adopted this policy, not the entire university. So, it’s about 3-5 years less converged than the article describes it.
A text sample from the newly released Book Two in Arts of Dark and Light, A SEA OF SKULLS, featuring one of the new perspective characters, Lugbol, the captain of a warband of orcs called the Black Fist. If you are new to the fictional world of Selenoth, pick up both Books One and Two, but start with A THRONE OF BONES for a combined 1,303 pages of truly epic military fantasy.
“I have tasted Manflesh! I have raped she-men! I have burned Man cities!”
Lugbol rolled his eyes. Who hadn’t? He was almost embarrassed for the big mountain orc, who was boasting of his accomplishments while stalking back and forth in a large circle of about fifty warband leaders listening to their warleader’s customary evening rant. As for the burned cities, most of them had held populations smaller than Lugbol’s own kai hari gungiyar. If they were the terrible Man cities of which Lugbol had been told frightening stories since he was a small orcling, then he was a one-armed goblin.
“Man-Zarki’agh shaking in their tents! Man-Kings on their thrones pissing themselves when they hear the name Zlatagh! Zlatagh Life-taker! Zlatagh Piss-maker! Zlatagh Man-eater!”
That was their cue. “Maneater! Maneater!” the shugaba’ugh obediently chanted, Lugbol among them. He knew that Zlatagh secretly hungered after the praise-name Mansbane, but even the giant warleader knew better than to risk stepping on the clawed toes of the Great Orc Azzakhar, whose claim to the title would certainly trump Zlatagh’s.
And Lugbol rather doubted any Man-King had ever heard the name Zlatagh, let alone pissed himself for fear of it.
Zlatagh was an imposing brute, though, even for a mountain orc. He stood nearly a head taller than most of the shugaba’ugh gathered around him, with a thick chest and heavy muscles that belied his violent speed. A pair of captured iron Man plates covered each powerful shoulder; two cow’s horns had somehow been driven through the center of both breastplates, curving upward like two spare pairs of tusks. Zlatagh’s own tusks were nearly as large; they were thick, yellowed with maturity, and reached nearly to the tip of his nose. Almost unique among the orcs present, Zlatagh’s tusks were unsharpened and unadorned with any bone, paint, or metal.
But that didn’t mean they weren’t fearsome weapons. Lugbol had seen with his own eyes how the big orc once used them to disembowel a goblin. The goblin had been wearing leather armor too, which made the feat all the more impressive. After Azzakhar commanded Zlatagh to invade the Man lands two moons past, the Maneater had found himself facing three challenges to his leadership, two of them on the very first day. Zlatagh beheaded one with the monstrous cleaver he called Headchopper, blinded the second with his bare hands, and ripped the arm off the third before using it to bash in the skull of the overmatched orc. At this point, only a truly thick-skulled shugaba would dare to cross the giant orc, let alone challenge him.
Nor, beyond personal ambition, was there any reason for anyone to do so. Zlatagh was a good warleader, and the warbands over which he’d been given command had enjoyed an unbroken string of victories under his leadership. More than one hundred Man villages had been pillaged and burned, and the orc encampment was littered with the broken remnants of trophies taken throughout the spring campaign. None could complain that he had not passed the ultimate test of leadership; providing his followers with more food than they could eat and more booty than they could carry. Not a single orc’s belly didn’t bulge with fat of the last two moons’ devourings, and even the most cowardly goblin wolfrider wore decorative trophies of one sort or another by now.
That didn’t mean Lugbol was entirely confident in the big mountain orc. Smashing sparsely guarded hamlets and carrying off helpless herds and captives was one thing, defeating a large and well-armed army of the sort that waited for them at the northwestern edge of the Korokhurmagh was another. Zlatagh could boast that the Man chieftains were pissing themselves and afraid to take the field against him all he liked, but it hadn’t escaped Lugbol’s notice that it was their forces who avoided meeting the mounted patrols that chased them throughout the woods, and that Zlatagh hadn’t moved their encampment one step closer to the Man army ever since its presence had been reported by wolfriders fleeing from the metal-clad Mandokki warriors and the huge, fierce, four-legged beasts they rode.
“Who marches today! Who takes the fight to Man!”
“Lugbol!” Lugbol raised his fist and cried half-heartedly, quite happy to be outshouted by other shugaba’ugh more eager to demonstrate their enthusiasm to the big orc. “Lugbol!”
In truth, he was hoping to spend the next day or three in the camp, sleeping, squagging, and allowing four of his wounded warriors to recover from their injuries. One of his trophies was a large keg of yellow liquid that looked like piss, tasted like honey, and hit the skull harder than ale, wine, or club. He didn’t know what it was called, but he fully intended to drain it with the help of a few select companions this evening. It was a pity no females had been permitted; a few abokhi’agh would just about make for a perfect way to spend a lazy afternoon. There were a few she-men in the prisoner corral, but Lugbol was more in the mood for some relaxed and drunken squagging than having his ears assaulted by the piercing shrieks of a raped man. Rape was a fine thing when the dead enemy was strewn about, smoke was in one’s nostrils, and one’s blood was up, but for now it struck him as being more akin to work than pleasure. Especially considering how he only had one good arm at his disposal at the moment.
He watched the Maneater nod with satisfaction as the big orc looked over the shouting captains vying for his attention. Zlatagh laughed, a deep guttural sound, as he basked in the raw power of the moment. Two months of slaughter and victory had given him absolute control over the shugaba’ugh, and it was clear that he knew it.
“The auguries!” Zlatagh cried suddenly. “Bring forward the augurs! What say Gor-Gor?”
As the shouting dissolved into a general cheering, Lugbol saw a pair of heavily tattooed orcs with sharpened silver tusk-caps push into the center of the circle. They accompanied someone; at first Lugbol thought it might be a juvenile Man, but then he caught a sight of yellow-green skin and realized it was a goblin. Nearly half their troops were goblins; they had started out with ten thousand but thanks to the inevitable costs of the campaign, there were about fifteen hundred fewer of them now. The doomed creature looked wild with terror; he seemed to have a fair notion of his imminent fate. But he was silent and he did not struggle; there was literally nothing that a single goblin could do to save itself, not when surrounded by howling, blood-hungry orcs with arms twice the thickness of his legs.
The augury looked to be the usual entrail-reading. For some reason Lugbol had never quite grasped, Gor-Gor preferred to speak to his priests through the intestines of his lesser worshippers. Goblins were the preferred method of communication, though orcs, Men, and even large rats would do in a pinch. He noticed Gor-Gor never seemed to speak through either wolves or warboars, two martial commodities that were always in great demand.
The goblin broke his silence when one shaman kneeled down before him, then ripped open his stomach with both silver-tipped tusks. As the other shaman held the victim, chanting all the while, the killer began calling out the haruspictic ritual and reached into the goblin with both hands. Then he began walking backwards, pulling the dying goblin’s innards out. After taking seven steps, he gave three firm tugs, then finally released the bloody, stinking offal and let it fall with a wet thud. The other shaman followed his example, stepping back and finally allowing the moaning goblin to collapse, dying, to the ground.
Lugbol saw the shaman raise his bloody hands and call out to Gor-Gor. The shaman’s eyes suddenly rolled back into his head and he swayed back and forth, as if drunk, while looking over the entrails spread out upon the ground. He took a step forward, then another, holding his palms toward the ground with his fingers spread wide. It was as if he was feeling his way through something rising up from the spilled innards. Several of the shaman’s tattoos flared into life; a rune on his shoulder blazed red and began to smoke as it burned away his skin, but the shaman didn’t seem to feel or notice anything was wrong. With nothing but the whites of his eyes showing, he began to grunt and growl. Gradually, the guttural noises became discernible as words.
“Fire,” he rumbled. “Fire burns. Demon wings of fire, burning, burning. Demons, iron demons, and death.”
The shugaba’ugh looked at each other, confused. This was not how the ritual usually proceeded. Zlatagh’s eyes narrowed and he made as if to step forward, then the big orc stopped himself. Even a warleader would not dare to lay claws upon a shaman in the holy grip of Gor-Gor.
“Death come, death come, on fire and iron, death come to all!” The shaman’s voice rose into a shriek and he thrust his bloody hands skyward. Then, he began to shake and shiver, as if Gor-Gor was attempting to rid himself of his puppet. Finally, the shaman collapsed face-first on the ground, where he lay motionless except for his labored breathing. Smoke, stinking of burned flesh, rose from three or four blackened tattoos on his back and shoulders.
“The Hell he say? What does that mean?” a furious Zlatagh demanded of the other shaman. One might have almost thought that he was alarmed. “What was the damn augury?” Lugbol looked around at his fellow shugaba’ugh. They were agitated and alarmed, with one significant exception. Snaghak, alone among the warband captains, wore an expression that was full of fury. He no longer looked triumphant, he looked downright vengeful. And, for once, Lugbol thought, Snaghak’s hatred didn’t appear to be directed at him. He stifled a dismissive snort and returned his attention to Zlatagh, who had grabbed the smaller shaman by his tattooed shoulders and was shaking him while shouting in his face.
“I don’t know!” the smaller orc pleaded. “I swear, I swear by Gor-Gor’s tail, I don’t know what happened!”
Zlatagh snarled in disgust and shoved the tattooed orc away from him. Then a groan from the fallen shaman caught the big orc’s attention and he whirled around to see the shaman, his skin still smoking slightly, trying to push himself up from the ground. The injured shaman failed the first time with a barely muted cry, then his muscles bulged with effort as he succeeded in rising to his knees on his second attempt. He didn’t seem to have known what happened to him earlier, because he suddenly winced and looked down at the burns on his shoulders with an expression of pained surprise.
“You!” Zlatagh said, reaching out and pulling the shaman to his feet. “What did you do? What thing did you see in the guts there? What secrets did Gor-Gor tell you?”
The shaman rolled his eyes and slumped in the warleader’s grasp. His initial reply was a drawn-out groan, but when the warleader violently shook him, it seemed to pull him out of his swoon. “I saw death. Everywhere, death.”
“Whose death! The Man cities?”
“No,” the stricken shaman said. He stared intensely into Zlatagh’s face. “Ours. Everywhere, all throughout the woods, I saw orcs dead on the ground, murdered, all of them, by demons of fire and iron!”
“You lie!” Zlatagh shouted instinctively, before driving an oversized fist into the shaman’s tattooed face. There was a loud crunch and the shaman crumpled as if he’d been cloven through the head with a dwarven axe. Whether the shaman was dead or not, Lugbol couldn’t tell, but he wouldn’t be surprised either way.
Zlatagh pointed at the other shaman, who was cringing behind the corpse of the goblin. “You, read the bloody guts! And tell me the truth or I’ll rip your balls out of your sack and feed them to you!”
You may recall last night’s discussion of Chanhassan, and what a nice, low-crime area it is. But it’s not necessarily safe, because predators always go where the prey is. As I said yesterday, there isn’t a public or private school in America where there isn’t at least a would-be child molester:
The principal of Chanhassen High School was arrested Tuesday morning on suspicion of possessing child pornography. Timothy Dorway, 44, was booked Tuesday after Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force arrested him.
The arrest followed a search of his home in Victoria and at the high school where he was named principal in 2010.
Charges have not been filed in the case. No Eastern Carver County School students are involved in the investigation, according to the school district. Dorway was placed on leave Tuesday.
“This is a difficult day for our students, parents and community,” Superintendent Jim Bauck said in a statement. “There are questions that we want answers to and we’re working with the BCA as they conduct an investigation to find those answers.
Looking at the guy, they’d better dig up the floor of his basement and the beds of his flower gardens. Homeschool or else!
