Author: VD

Book Eight

I think this marks the point at which George Martin has officially lost the plot. I never thought he was likely to finish all seven books, but now they’re talking about stretching the series to eight? I assume they’ll end up enlisting Joe Abercrombie, or one of the HBO screenwriters, to finish them after Martin goes the way of all Starks in Westeros, but I think that Martin should instead consider pulling an epic literary prank that would dwarf the HBO campaign featuring Sean Bean that misled all the viewers who hadn’t read the books.

What if everything that has “happened” is just a terrible nightmare of the Mad King, Aerys II Targaryen? How AWESOME would that be? After A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, it would probably be considerably more entertaining than whatever perversions and grotesqueries Martin, or his successor, attempts to gin up in order to prod his torpid readers into feeling some sort of emotional reaction to the events in the books.

The challenge of cause-and-effect

This plaintive protest, in a nutshell, explains why there can never be any significant mixing of various population sub-groups that will be successful over time. Not without the rule of a militarized aristocracy at a bare minimum, and a strictly limited voting franchise at best.

“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

Now, this is a woman who cannot grasp the connection between her votes for “anything that will make this city better” and the consequent increase in her property tax bill. How can one reasonably argue that she should be permitted to vote? She is literally non compos mentis with regards to basic politics.

And she is high-functioning in comparison to millions of other voters! If nothing else, she has managed to provide for herself and pay her mortgage for 23 years. That puts her ahead of tens of millions of people.

The worst thing is the probable consequences of her selling her house. She’ll move somewhere less expensive, and then promptly resume voting for the very things that forced her to move there. Because she does not understand cause and effect.

Feminism is for psychos

I’ve commented numerous times on how feminism is less coherent than communism and more murderous than National Socialism. That is because it is, quite literally, an ideology concocted by madwomen:

In the 1970’s I was alarmed to hear that my big sister, Kate Millett, who had serious mental health issues which had agonized my family and her friends for many years, was organizing a group called The Mental Patients’ Project in order to claim that the psychiatric community and society were “oppressing” people and “stigmatizing them with labels such as psychotic, bi-polar, schizophrenic, borderline personalities,” etc and unconstitutionally imprisoning them in hospitals thereby violating their civil rights.  We, as a family, had struggled for years with Kate’s issues, many times attempting to hospitalize her so she could obtain the serious help she so obviously obviously needed. She was a brutal sadist, a violent bully at whose hands everyone about her suffered. 

 During the speech after the screening she fell apart onstage before a packed assembly of fawning admirers. It was a standing room only audience.  In fact, they had had to schedule a second screening at the last minute, as the response had been huge. As I sat next to her lectern during her incoherent ravings I witnessed the pained looks of confusion as they swept across those faces like a small gale whipping up across the top of a sea; at first tiny ripples gliding across the surface.  They were polite until the realization took shape that she was making no sense whatsoever.  People began glancing at each other, whispering a little then turning to one another with more energy, politeness gone, as some began to get up and leave.  Soon many were slipping out and that was followed by a mad dash for the exits.  She was babbling and shouting incoherently whilst I nodded and pretended every word made perfect sense.  I could not bear to betray her in public.  I sat there feeling my heart melting through my chest and draining into my belly with an indescribable sick empathy.  Her humiliation was unbearable as the gale whipped up to a force ten and with one last enormous surge we were left in an empty room.  The second screening was cancelled.

We returned to her apartment in relative silence.  I was trapped with her in an unfamiliar place. I knew not one person in Berkeley.  I was afraid to sleep for fear of awakening in a deadly pool of blood with a knife in my back. She stayed awake for five days babbling, ranting and wouldn’t allow me to sleep.   She was seeing “little green men” and her eyes were literally rolling around in their sockets.  Never have I been more alone and terrified.  However, love and concern for her and any others she might harm prevented me from leaving.  Unable to abandon her, I stayed and whenever possible reached out by phone to other family members/friends in far flung places such as NYC, Minnesota, Nebraska pleading for advice and help.

 Note that this was written by her sister. And then mark this quote from Wikipedia:

“Kate Millet is an American feminist writer, artist and activist. A seminal influence on second-wave feminism, Millett is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics.”

Feminism is, quite literally, insane. Any woman who calls herself a feminist is identifying herself as a woman with mental health issues.

“Retire, you selfish old bitch!”

The New York Times leads the campaign for Justice Ginsberg to step down while Obama is still president:

The “best way for her to advance all the things she has spent her life working for is to ensure that a Democratic president picks her successor,” wrote Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine. Randall Kennedy, a Harvard law professor and a former clerk to Justice Marshall, has argued that both she and Justice Breyer should retire. Former Justice Stevens, for his part, has said, “It’s an appropriate thing to think about your successor.” (Indeed, Chief Justice Warren deliberately resigned before the 1968 election, in an effort to prevent Nixon from naming his successor.)

On the other side of the issue, Dahlia Lithwick of Slate has written, “I have seen not a lick of evidence that Ginsburg is failing,” adding that the justice’s successor is not likely to be as liberal as she is, given today’s political climate.

This much seems clear: The decision is Justice Ginsburg’s, and people close to the court do not expect her to retire this year. No doubt, being a Supreme Court justice is more enjoyable and consequential than being a retired justice. Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired in 2006, has since regretted stepping down as early as she did.

At the same time, there is no denying that any justice who stays on the court into old age is taking a chance. Justice Ginsburg will do damage to the causes about which she cares most if she follows the path of previous liberal justices who allowed a Republican to replace them. Similarly, Justice Scalia or Justice Kennedy will hurt conservatism if either passes up a chance to resign under a Republican president in coming years — and doesn’t get another such chance.

Just think about what liberals would give to have had a Democratic president replace Justice Marshall. And think about how many major cases — on voting rights, campaign donations, the death penalty and other issues — might have turned out differently.

The most interesting aspect of this editorial is that it tends to indicate the NYT’s belief that the next president will not be Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat. Personally, I’d love to see Obama appoint one more Supreme Court justice just to see how badly he’d screw it up. He’d likely appoint a corrupt black lawyer from Chicago, or, more likely, one of Goldman Sachs’s corporate attorneys, because Valerie Jarret wouldn’t accept the pay cut.

One more blogger wanted

We’ve filled most of the blogger slots at the Castalia House blog, all except one. I’d like to see a weekly interview there, not just of Castalia authors, but of independent authors, self-published authors, and mainstream SF/F authors alike. So, if you’re interested in interviewing your favorite authors, please speak up in the comments with your list of the first five authors you would interview if given the opportunity. I’ll choose one person on that basis, in the event more than one person steps forward, and we’ll take it from there.

And speaking of Castalia House, MK explains how to set your Kindle device to take advantage of our updates:

  1. Near the top right of the Amazon home page, choose “Manage your content and devices” from about halfway down the “Your Account” dropdown menu.
  2. You will be prompted to enter your password – even if already logged in to the site. The content page will load. At the top, choose the “Settings” tab.
  3. Scroll down to “Automatic Book Update” and set this to “On.”

Note that to retain your furthest page read, notes, annotations, etc.,when an update happens, you need to have the “Annotation Back Up” setting turned on in all of your devices and reading apps.

Updated versions will replace the existing versions on your devices seamlessly, in the background, with no interaction required. If you choose to keep Automatic Book Update turned off, you must update manually. I am not sure exactly how manual updates are handled now, but the Amazon.com Kindle Help pages indicate that if Automatic Book Update is off, an email is sent when an updated version is available. Presumably there is a link in the email.

The tedious fruit of nihilism

I appreciate the HBO version of A GAME OF THRONES. Unlike most screen adaptations, it has actually improved upon the books in many ways, and it is likely to continue doing so now that it has reached the second-rate material of the later books. But in this recap of the recent episode in which the Red Viper and the Mountain fight their duel, Andy Greenwald pinpoints the fundamental flaw in the SF/F genre’s nihilism.

It was all quite thrilling, for a time, with the Red Viper leaping balletically through the summery air and Alex Graves’s camera swooping vertiginously to catch him. Game of Thrones has often punched me in the heart, but it’s rarely had it fluttering so mightily in my throat. But then, just as Tyrion was getting his hopes up and Cersei was reaching for her Big Gulp of merlot, Oberyn spiked the ball at the 1-yard line. Rather than finish off the Mountain, Oberyn was just getting warmed up, demanding much more than an improbable victory. Instead, like Tyrion in the garden all those years ago, Oberyn demanded logic and an answer. And we all know what happened next. Kung. Kung. Kung.

Actually, the sound of Oberyn’s head exploding was much more terrible than that. The defanging — and defacing — of the Red Viper was among the worst things I’ve ever seen on a screen, but it was definitely the worst thing I’ve ever heard: It somehow managed to remind me both of my own mortality and of Gallagher. (Trust me when I say I’m not sure which was more unbearable.) And in that gruesome, hideous moment I realized that the real takeaway from Tyrion’s story isn’t that he’s a fool for wanting order when there is only chaos. It’s that we just might be for greedily tuning in to the Orson Hour every week and expecting the same thing.

Look, contra Ramsay Snow, I have been paying attention. I harbor no illusions of a happy ending. But even in the midst of an epic, excellent season that has provided more wit, resonance, and emotion than I had previously thought possible, I am growing slightly weary of being taught the same merciless lesson again and again. I’d like to think that Charlie Brown had some grudging respect for Lucy the first time she pulled away the football. But the fifth? What happened to dashing Prince Oberyn was gripping, horrifying television. But, unlike his skull, it was also rather hollow. Few authors could introduce such a fantastic character with such economy and skill (and fewer showrunners could do the same on television, with even more of both). But only George R.R. Martin would so sadistically run that character into the buzz saw of disappointment and plot that is Game of Thrones just to prove a point — and, I suppose, to tighten the noose a bit more around Tyrion’s neck. Like a beetle, Oberyn was born to die, and in the most gruesome, splattery way possible. And to what end? Shocking us isn’t the same thing as challenging us. A simpleton with a rock might not need to explain himself, but a writer usually does. At this point, the most radical thing Game of Thrones could do is to make the audience exhale in relief.

But it isn’t only George R.R. Martin who is obsessed with making the same point over and over and over. In his excellent collection of essays on science fiction, TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN, John C. Wright makes the vital distinction between a good story and a well-written one:

An artist can draw a picture of the rotting skull of a dead dog on a dungheap with maggots and blind worms crawling on its exposed brains with perfect perspective, shading, composition, and balance of light and dark, and yet it is still a picture of a dead dog.

Lest you think Wright exaggerates the depths to which the nihilistic authors of SF/F habitually descend, consider this, which is the conclusion of the highly regarded, and recently deceased, literary SF author Iain M. Banks’s novel WALKING ON GLASS.

In the grass he saw a magazine lying, torn. He looked more closely at it, saw a woman’s buttocks, over a pair of hairy knees. The woman’s bottom was reddened slightly; there was a hand poised, too obviously posed, not in motion, over her. A small breeze ruffled the pages of the magazine for him as he looked, as obligingly as any Hollywood wind-machine stripping a calendar between scenes. The pictures in the rest of the magazine were almost all identical.

He turned away, disgusted with something other than the pathetic but relatively harmless fetish of the magazine, and saw a flurry of flies swirl into the air from something dark in the grass; it looked like an animal’s leg.

He closed his eyes, willing tears to come, some final part of him giving in only now, wanting the surrender to animal emotion which until now he had fought against, but as he stood there he could feel no tears coming, only a son of resigned, ugly bitterness, a comprehensive revulsion for everything around him, for all the people and their artefacts and thoughts, all their stupid ways and pointless aims. He opened his smarting eyes, blinking angrily.

Here it was; this was what it all really meant; here was your civilisation, your billion years of evolution, right here; a soiled and tattered wanking-mag and chopped domestic animal.

Sex and violence, writ small like all our standard fantasies.

The pain in his belly which had afflicted him earlier returned, sharp and fierce as a rusty blade.

It swelled in him then, like some wildfire cancer; a rapid disgust, a total allergy syndrome directed at everything around him; at the filthy, eviscerated mundanity of it all, the sheer crawling awful-ness of existence; all the lies and the pain, the legalized murder, the privileged theft, the genocides and the hatreds and the stupefying human cruelties, all the starveling beauty of the burgeoning poor and the crippled in body and brain, all the life-defying squalor of the cities and the camps, all the sweltering frenetics of the creeds and the faiths, all the torturingly ingenious, carefully civilised savagery of the technology of pain and the economies of greed; all the hollow, ringing, bullshitting words used to justify and explain the utter howling grief of our own cruelty and stupidity; it piled on him, in him, like a weight of atmosphere, that awful mass of air above for those moments no longer balanced by a pressure within, so that he felt at once crushed, smashed inside, but swollen too; bursting with the sickening burden of a cheap and tumid revelation.

The writing is excellent from a technical perspective. But to the extent that it is more than the picture of a dead dog, the message is poisonous, and, as Greenwald correctly observes, tedious. It is ironic that Banks died as he wrote, of a wildfire cancer that brought a meaningless end to his meaningless life of writing repetitively about the meaninglessness of Man.

But that is the fruit of nihilism: insignificance, boredom, and sooner or later, death.

Another whack of the Tetsubo

I’m beginning to get the impression that Larry is underwhelmed by the call to repentance, recantation, and self-abasement: 

Secondly, and this is going to be much more damaging for him longterm, he allowed himself to become very closely associated to Vox Day in the process. Ultimately people do judge others by their associations, and both Larry Correia and John C Wright have made very public declarations of support for Day, that I fear both will deeply regret in the long run.

One of the tactics I’ve seen them take is conflating my views with those of Vox Day. It doesn’t matter that I’ve disagreed with the man, and I’ve debated with him several times, but they sure love linking me to Vox. See, unlike me, they can actually find a couple of comments from him that they can manage to spin up some outrage over, and everybody knows righteous indignation gives libprogs super powers.

You have an issue with something Vox said, take it up with him. I did, and I found the guy to be a capable debater, and many of the insinuations about him floating around the internet were grossly exaggerated. (says the man who the Guardian has insinuated hates women and wants to keep fiction the exclusive domain of a group he doesn’t technically belong to, so I simply can’t imagine the internet exaggerating somebody’s beliefs.)

The woman Vox insulted with the infamous half-savage comment also has a long history of inflammatory racial statements, and had been throwing insults at Vox for years, but somehow she always gets a pass in these discussions about “divisiveness” (remember what I said earlier about the Ctrl H search and replace to put Jew instead of White Man in their tweets? She’s totally the best). I don’t think she likes me much either, because she gave a speech a little while ago and condemned Mr. Free Speech At All Costs… I think that’s supposed to be me, but personally I took that as a compliment, because you know, that part where I actually believe in free speech and stuff.

So I recommend a short story by somebody who made a statement they found racist? DIVISIVE! And Damien will condemn me in his newspaper. Meanwhile, an approved author writes tons of negative things about an ethnic group that it is cool to hate? Totally not divisive, and Damien will plug her in his newspaper. Now me personally, I think the concept of race is increasingly irrelevant bullshit, and I judge all humans as individuals, but I’m the International Lord of Hate.

Public declaration of support? By that Damien means I failed to join his lynch mob? Sadly I couldn’t find my jack boots in time.

One of the International Lord of Hate’s commenters pointed out what Damien was trying, and failing, to accomplish: “They want to slam Vox because he is the one nut they can’t crack, but
boy, if they can turn a few of his friends and supporters, that’s at
least along the lines of their goals.”

On behalf of Mr. Correia, Mr. Wright, and Mrs. Hoyt, I am offended at the idea they should be deemed any easier to crack than me. (As opposed to that notoriously soft and bendable reed, Col. Kratman, whose pastimes make Ramsay Snow’s look like embroidery.) Now, it is true that mi amigo latino has a different perspective on race than I do. I realize this may astonish white people, particularly of the SWPL variety, but we members of La Raza Cósmica do not necessarily think alike; some of us don’t even believe in the inevitability of Universópolis. Transmetachronopolis, yes. Universópolis, not so much.

As Larry says, we’ve even debated the matter in private, and while I did not convince him, I believe he did come to understand that my position is based entirely on sound genetic science and history rather than personal preferences. Since then, the publication of A Troublesome Inheritance by Nicholas Wade has demonstrated that my “controversial” views are entirely in line with current science and that the “Nurture not Nature” perspective is outdated and unscientific.

(Nota Ironica: the very concept of La Raza Cósmica is based on the idea that Darwinism was “created to validate, explain, and justify ethnic superiority and to repress others.” So, you see, this is why only fifth-racers like me “have the territorial, racial, and spiritual factors necessary to initiate the ‘universal era of humanity’.” Bow down, you colonial sons and daughters of the Old World, abase yourselves, you children of the Orient, kneel before me, you spawnlings of Darkest Africa. Bow to me, in the name of humanity!)

I love Larry. I have great respect for him. He’s the best action writer of our generation. But I don’t answer for him and he doesn’t answer for me. That’s one thing the Left will never accept: there is no guilt by association. A man can only answer for his own deeds, his own words, his own actions.

Which is one reason why Larry declined the opportunity to participate in the suggested auto-da-fe:

I’m quite serious about my suggestion by the way. I think if Correia wrote publicly to support the new diversity in the genre, and apologised for any perception he was campaigning against it, that might help him a lot.

Apologize for the perception? Apologize for being seen as an enemy of progress? That sounds suspiciously like the apologies Stalin used to have people sign right before he shipped them off to the gulag, so in response, Beria, er, I mean Damien, here are a few of my thoughts about what it really means when a libprog demands an apology.

Rule number one. Never apologize for something that shouldn’t be apologized for. Check out all the various firings, purges, boycotts, and cancellations. Apologizing for causing their outrage is you taking responsibility for their ignorance and inability to control their own emotions. Apologizing to the perpetually outraged means they own you. You have declared yourself guilty and vulnerable to their threats. It is like negotiating with terrorists. Give into their demands and you’re just encouraging them to blow something else up.

If I was the type of mushy headed fool that would issue an apology, it wouldn’t matter anyway, because as we’ve already seen my actual words and actions mean nothing compared to the agreed upon narrative, and that narrative is that I’m guilty of pretty much every vile thing they can think of. Luckily for me, I’m successful enough that these people aren’t particularly threatening, so I scrape them off my shoe and continue writing books.

Normal people only apologize for things that should be apologized for, like for example: “I’m sorry the Social Justice Warrior contingent of sci-fi is made up of a bunch of perpetually outraged adult children.”

I suspected that would be the outcome. As for me, I’m just wondering when all the pinkshirts and Social Justice Warriors who said less-than-flattering things about me are going to apologize to me now that N.K. Jemisin has openly admitted that she is not merely “half-savage”, but rather, “all savage and damned proud of it”.

And in the meantime, John C. Wright has produced the United Underworld Literary Movement Manifesto, complete with logo. Apparently I am the Supreme Dark Lord, Secret Warden of the Cosmic Fifth Race, and Eternal Champion of Universópolis.

The inevitable decline of atheism

Another reminder that the future belongs to those who show up for it:

The world could see a resurgence of Christianity driven by population decline
in sceptical countries, the geneticist Steve Jones has claimed. Professor Jones said history had proven that religion grows rapidly during
large population booms, particularly in poorer countries. He argued that rapid growth in Africa could spark a new resurgence of major
religions like Christianity. However in increasingly atheist countries in Europe people are no longer
reproducing in sufficient numbers to avoid population decline, he told the
Hay Literary Festival.

“We atheists sometimes congratulate ourselves that the incidence of religious
belief is going down. But religious people have more children. Where are people having the most
children? It’s in the tropics and in Africa. It’s clearly the case that the future will involve an increase in religious
populations and a decrease in scepticism.”

It’s not only that. There is also the fact that most of the children raised in an atheist home eventually become religious; the only reason that the rate of growth of atheism briefly, (in historical terms), was fast enough to surmount that inhibiting factor is because the atheist population was so small. Atheists are at the literal bottom of the retention rate in comparison with every religious group from Hindus to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Even the mealy-mouthed Anglicans fare better.

A more important factor is that times of wealth and peace have always been a counter-indicator of religious belief. The rich and fat seldom believe they have any need for God, and they deeply resent any divinely inspired restrictions on their descent into decadence. At the end of the longest period of peace and economic expansion in the history of the West, it should be no surprise at all that we have an obese, decadent, depraved, diseased population that fears no God.

They will learn better soon enough. Both history and the Bible are very clear concerning the eventual fate of such societies.

The Tetsubo strikes

Larry Correia addresses the wannabe’s latest hit piece in the Guardian. It’s as if he thinks he cries about us enough, Tor will reward him a book contract:

Women writers have asserted a growing presence in the genre, leading this year lead to a strong presence in all of the genre’s major awards.

Great. Despite the narrative about me to the contrary, I like female authors. I support female authors. I support authors from any group you can think of as long as they tell a good story and they’re not complete douchebags, so I guess you could say that I just support authors in general. I’m all in favor of anybody from any group being able to write what they want, more power to them.

So if we want true equality among writers how about we give awards based on quality rather than what box the author checks on an EEOC form?

Oh, but wait. I forgot. I like to judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. That’s racist now. I also like to judge a book based upon whether I like it or not, rather than ranking the nominees based upon the acceptability of their political outlooks or which ones best assuage my warm-beige guilt.

(speaking of irony, when the announcements were made and I immediately started getting character assassinated for being a hater of women, homosexuals, sunshine, and goodness with zero evidence, the book of the week I was promoting on this blog was written by a non-white immigrant woman and had a gay hero, but hey, narrative).

Women and non-white writers swept the board at the Nebula awards, winning every major category.

Normally, if there is a bunch of gloating and back slapping about how one particular group was totally shut out of something, we’d consider that bigotry. However I tend to forget that to a libprog diversity is literally only skin deep, while diversity of thought is evil and must be crushed. The same people crowing about this year’s diversity were happy to attack nominees last year for their religious beliefs, because that’s the wrong kind of diversity. They routinely attack non-whites and women if they aren’t of the correct political persuasion.

Speaking of gloating, Twitter after the Nebulas was interesting. If you take the tweets of the Social Justice Warrior crowd, Ctrl H, find and replace White Male with Jew, they totally sound like snippets of Heinrich Himmler speeches. It is hilarious until the nausea sets in.

And in the meantime, Damien tweets: “Vox Day is VERY upset that other conservative writers are distancing themselves from his extremism.” 

(laughs) Now that I posted it here, that’s probably the most-read piece of fiction he’s ever written. See, I’m not a rabbit. I’m no more concerned what other conservative writers think of my opinions than what Damien or the SFWA does. They don’t need my approval, and I most certainly don’t need theirs.

And The Rapier finishes off the remains. Sweet Shakespeare, but the man’s blog posts make for far more entertaining reading than any 10 Pink SF/F novels. Read the whole thing. It is… Mr. John C. Wright at his soul-withering best.

Dear sir,

I reject your kindly-meant advice with the wholehearted yet instinctive contempt a clean-minded bridegroom uses when throwing aside a disease-raddled whore who has lept from the garbage pit to embrace him.

My reason is this: It is not that I think Vox Day good, Mr. Walter. I do not know much of anything about him. I think you are evil. I know enough about you to know that, you smarmy, unctuous, long-haired, dough-faced, damp-fingered, weak-minded, small-souled, craven, race-baiting, unutterable failure of a human being.

The more you talk, the stronger your opposition grows, as the science fiction readership slowly comes to understand that you and yours hold them in contempt. You regard them as lesser beings. You talk as if they are the merely passive recipients of the political opinions you and yours want to program into their unwinking and dull eyes. You speak as if they are bags of meat, whose only dignity is in their most shallow surface features, namely, their skin color.

That is your picture of the men and women I revere as my patrons and patronesses.

You think you are better than them. Your reason for thinking yourself better is that you abandoned the intellectual clarity and moral discipline, that you call ‘reaction’, which they embrace. You think you are better than them, not despite, but because you are  worse; objectively and obviously worse; worse as a thinker, worse as a man.

Ultimately people judge a man by how often his mouth is full of manure, I fear you will deeply regret your public display of coprophagy in the future.

Millennial marriage, or the lack thereof

Bryan Preston points out what appears to be a very ominous statistic concerning the Millennials:

Millennials are slower to marry than previous generations. They have moved the median marriage age up to 29 for men and 27 for women. They are largely delaying marriage because they are loaded down with massive student debt, and because there are few jobs available to them upon which they can build their lives. The current Democratic administration’s anti-jobs policies are largely to blame for the latter. The lack of accountability in university practices and tuition is largely to blame for the former. Millennials are being squeezed by the Obama economy. Yet they remain more likely to vote for Democrats, if they vote.

I’m not here to slam single parenthood, but single parenthood has proven to be a very strong predictor of one’s economic outcome and one’s politics, meaning, one’s relationship to the government and the policies one tends to vote for. Simply put, single adults tend to vote in a certain way, and children of single adults tend to have poorer economic outcomes, which leads to a certain voting pattern. Marriage is a strong predictor of political behavior.

Currently just 26% of millennials — those between age 18 and 33 — are married. At the same age, 36% of GenX and 48% of the Baby Boomers were married. And 69% of millennials say they want to get married, but the lack of jobs is holding them back.

However, one thing that is often left out of the equation is that the racial demographics of the Millennials is very different than those of GenX and the Baby Boomers. It is risky to base too many conclusions on the generational data without first breaking out the various racial sub-groups. For example, I have seen data that suggests white Millennials don’t actually vote very differently than white GenX voters, which, based on the historical age-shift, would tend to indicate that white Millennials are trending to the right of white GenXers.