Author: VD

One bankster down…

I guess this officially makes it a global depression:

A South Korean stock broker jumped to his death from a high-rise office amid worldwide market turmoil. The 48-year-old broker, identified only as “Seo,” sent text messages to colleagues expressing regret over severe losses, just minutes before leaping to his death Wednesday in the city of Daegu, according to Chief investigator Lee Kang-ho.

Of course, given the total lack of shame and remorse demonstrated by Wall Street in 2008 when the banks looted the American taxpayer to make up for their gambling losses, one tends to suppose they’ll probably need a little help. But we can always offer them encouragement.

Ever more efficiently killing girls

It is interesting, if entirely predictable, to see how the equalitarian perspective is rapidly shifting from the mother’s right to kill her unborn child to contemplating a legal ban on the mother being permitted to know the sex of her unborn child:

Blood drawn from expectant mothers could offer parents an earlier sneak peek at their baby’s sex than methods currently used in the U.S., researchers said Tuesday. The test may be particularly valuable for families that harbor sex-linked genetic disorders like hemophilia, they add. Because such disorders mostly strike boys, knowing that the baby is a girl could spare the mother diagnostic procedures, such as amniocentesis, that carry a small risk of miscarriage.

“It could reduce the number of invasive procedures that are being performed for specific genetic conditions,” said Dr. Diana Bianchi of Tufts University School of Medicine, who worked on the new study.

But other researchers voiced concerns, saying it could be misused to terminate a pregnancy if the baby isn’t of the desired sex.

“What you have to consider is the ethics of this,” said Dr. Mary Rosser, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York. “If parents are using it to determine gender and then terminate the pregnancy based on that, that could be a problem,” she told Reuters Health. “Remember, gender is not a disease.”

Au contraire, Dr. Rosser. If you accept the abortionist position, then fetal gender is a terminal disease if the mother determines it to be so. Needless to say, with this new scientific advance, we can expect the ratio of male/female births to increase significantly in the next ten years. Isn’t feminism wonderful? Thanks to feminism, women can vote for Democrats, work full-time even if they don’t want to, compile impressive STD collections and own all the cats they want… assuming they can manage to survive the increasingly hostile environment of their fully informed mother’s wombs.

The equalitarians appear to have failed to consider that if demographic concerns and sexual birth ratios are to be considered a legitimate basis for legal policies, there should be no qualms about passing federal laws requiring women to get married and bear their first child prior to the age of 25.

The Prince of Porn

That title isn’t even remotely fair. But who can be expected to resist such a perfect conjunction of rhetoric and alliteration? R. Scott Bakker’s The Prince of Nothing is not an erotic trilogy, it is an interesting, original, large-scale fantasy series that happens to incorporate, to its detriment, some pornographic elements and an amount of inept philosophizing. But since my review sparked a relatively lively debate over whether this is a fair and accurate characterization of the three novels concerned, I thought it would be sensible to appeal to the judgment of an esteemed intellectual who has provided us with a fail-proof method of determining whether a movie is pornographic or not.

I speak, of course, of Umberto Eco and his famous essay “How to Recognize a Porn Movie”:

Pornographic movies are full of people who climb into cars and drive for miles and miles, couples who waste incredible amounts of time signing in at hotel desks, gentlemen who spend many minutes in elevators before reaching their rooms, girls who sip various drinks and who fiddle interminably with laces and blouses before confessing to each other that they prefer Sappho to Don Juan. To put it simply, crudely, in porn movies, before you can see a healthy screw you have to put up with a documentary that could be sponsored by the Traffic Bureau.

There are obvious reasons. A movie in which Gilbert did nothing but rape Gilbertina, front, back, and sideways, would be intolerable. Physically, for the actors, and economically, for the producer. And it would also be, psychologically, intolerable for the spectator: for the transgression to work, it must be played out against a background of normality. To depict normality is one of the most difficult things for any artist – whereas portraying deviation, crime, rape, torture, is very easy.

Therefore the pornographic movie must present normality – essential if the transgression is to have interest – in the way that every spectator conceives it. Therefore, if Gilbert has to take the bus and go from A to B, we will see Gilbert taking the bus and then the bus proceeding from A to B.

This often irritates the spectators, because they think they would like the unspeakable scenes to be continuous. But this is an illusion on their part. They couldn’t bear a full hour and a half of unspeakable scenes. So the passages of the wasted time are essential.

I repeat. Go into a movie theater. If, to go from A to B, the characters take longer than you would like, then the film you are seeing is pornographic.

Since both the excruciating crusade to Shimeh and Prince Kellhus’s journey to find his father bordered on the interminable, with the only relief being the occasional battle, philosophical pontification, penetration of the prostitute Esmenet by various parties, or the torture of a Tleilaxu Face Dancer(1), the matter can clearly be regarded as settled. It is also worth noting that in his essay, Eco points out how “portraying deviation, crime, rape, torture, is very easy”. Ergo, reliance upon them in a literary work is not evidence of a work’s brilliance or greatness or realism, but rather testifies to the author’s incapacity, laziness, deviancy, or limited moral palette.

We know that Bakker is neither incapable nor lazy. Aside from his fictional meanderings, we have no reason to believe Bakker is any more deviant than anyone else. He’s Canadian, not Japanese, after all.(2) So, we can safely conclude on the basis of last February’s discourse on uncertainty and amorality that it is his limited moral palette, which stems from the affectation(3) that uncertainty is the highest moral good, that is responsible for Bakker’s frequent resort to pornographic elements in The Prince of Nothing.(4) There is, after all, little room to appeal to the reader’s emotions or moral sensibilities on the basis of a character’s insufficient uncertainty, indeed, the limitations of this peculiar moral palette is such that it is difficult to even justify any action at all on the part of any character intended to be presented as heroic or ideal.

(1) Consult skin-spy, whatever.
(2) True fact: 95% of all the world’s weirdness comes from Japan. You’ll see more deviance on a public bus in Tokyo than in a Toronto S&M dungeon.
(3) And it is an affectation, nothing more. It’s always amusing to see how rapidly a post-moralist devolves into vulgar morality when forced to choose between his steadfast disapproval of a traditional moral judgment and his professed uncertainty.
(4) Note that I wrote the following months BEFORE reading any of Bakker’s fiction: “Let a hundred nihilistic anti-heroes blossom into the murderous child rapists of their creators’ moralblind fantasies.” That’s how perfectly predictable his “creatively transgressive” attempts to shock the reader into perceiving black amid a thousand shades of grey were.

Why not?

It’s been working so well, after all:

The Federal Reserve said it will keep its monetary policy stimulus for “at least through mid-2013” in an effort to support a flagging economy and fragile global markets that faced considerable internal dissent.

The Fed really does appear to have a terminal case of martellus clavus. Their only hammer is a loose money supply, therefore the problem MUST be a nail. Hit it again! And by the way, for those who don’t speak Fed, this announcement of zero interest money for a minimum of two years in advance is about as close as Ben Bernanke is ever going to get to admitting that the economy is in a depression until it becomes a matter of public record.

The most raciss mayor in America

Has there ever been such an out-and-out raciss in charge of a major American city?

Mayor Michael A. Nutter, telling marauding black youths “you have damaged your own race,” imposed a tougher curfew Monday in response to the latest “flash mob” — spontaneous groups of teens who attack people at random on the streets of the city’s tourist and fashionable shopping districts.

“Take those God-darn hoodies down, especially in the summer. Pull your pants up and buy a belt ‘cause no one wants to see your underwear or the crack of your butt. If you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you? They don’t hire you ‘cause you look like you’re crazy,” the mayor said. “You have damaged your own race.”

Mr. Nutter announced that he was beefing up police patrols in certain neighborhoods, enlisting volunteers to monitor the streets and moving up the weekend curfew for minors to 9 p.m.

“Nutter” is an appropriate name for this crazy raciss lunatic. Can’t the Feds step in and arrest him on hate-speech charges? Where are Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Eric Holden? It is time to march on Philadelphia and protest this vicious example of raciss extremism!

Three nights of vibrancy

Multiculturalism runs amok across England:

“Violence and mayhem were spreading like wildfire through the capital last night with police apparently powerless to act. Scenes of mob rule became more terrifying by the minute as widespread arson and anarchy was added to the orgy of looting.  By midnight flashpoints had multiplied around London, with Clapham, Hackney, Dalston, Peckham, Woolwich and Lewisham added to the list which already included Enfield, Walthamstow and Tottenham.  And there were fears that the chaos could spread nationwide, with Croydon to the south of the capital ablaze, and even Birmingham and Bristol joining in the destruction as hundreds of youths smashed shop windows and looted the contents.”

Come on, everyone! Let’s all join hands and sing a rousing chorus of “People are People”. Surely what we have here is merely a failure to communicate and mutually understand! The fact is that the Post-Modern West has forgotten what both the Imperial Chinese and the Republican Romans very well understood 2,000 years ago. Barbarians are barbarians. They are not civilized people. They do not build, they do not produce, they have no capacity or interest in doing anything more than breed, subsist, and destroy. You build a wall to keep the barbarians out, and when they try to invade, as they eventually will, you utilize civilized discipline to slaughter them. You can try to convert them to civilization in their own lands, and sometimes they will be able to maintain one if the population possesses sufficient average time preferences, but whatever you do, you don’t permit them to move in next door.

The picture above is an apt metaphor for Western multiculturalism. The man being beaten up is a press photographer, most likely a nice left-liberal who up until the very moment that the photo was taken was a staunch believer in multiculturalism and human equality. But this image is perhaps even more apt.

And don’t fool yourself. This is coming to America soon. Be prepared. Take some of those gold profits and invest in wood, blued steel, copper, and lead. You don’t need an arsenal sufficient for the Apocalypse, but at a minimum, you need enough to prove a sufficiently hard target to encourage the barbarians to seek easier prey.

Here is an example of the difference between civilization and barbarism. Note that the barbarians quail before practically ANY show of discipline and determination by the civilized.

“Earlier, a social divide revealed itself in Clapham this morning. Looters stopped sacking shops at the junction between St Johns Road to the north and Northcote Road to the south. To the north are council estates and chain stores such as Debenhams, JD and Currys. These shops were looted. To the south are Victorian terraces and shops like Jack Wills, White Stuff and artisan bakeries. These were untouched. Am told Northcote Road residents formed a line at where the roads meet and let no-one pass.”

It’s not a social divide, but rather a societal divide. This is why segregation is not only vital, it is a moral imperative supported by thousands of years of evidence. Mass immigration and forced desegregation is literally societal suicide by the civilized.

More rumblings from Lizard Land

Democrats are pining for Hillary:

Looking as if she were about to cry, an 83-year-old Obama supporter shook her head. “I’m so disappointed in him,” she said. “It’s true: Hillary is tougher.”

During the last few days, the whispers have swelled to an angry chorus of frustration about Obama’s perceived weaknesses. Many Democrats are furious and heartbroken at how ineffectual he seemed in dealing with Republican opponents over the debt ceiling, and liberals are particularly incensed by what they see as his capitulation to conservatives on fundamental liberal principles.

In Connecticut, a businessman who raised money for Obama in 2008 said, “I’m beyond disgusted.” In New Jersey, a teacher reported that even her friends in the Obama administration are grievously disillusioned with his lack of leadership—and many have begun to whisper about a Democratic challenge for the 2012 presidential nomination. “I think people are furtively hoping that Hillary runs,” she said.

It may be furtive now, at least among the Democratic grass roots. The rumblings among the Democratic leadership began long ago. Take another 2,000 points off the Dow and Democrats will be wearing white hoods and waving nooses if Obama doesn’t withdraw from the nomination in favor of another Democrat, presumably the Lizard Queen.

And in other news, it looks as if Rick Perry is in.

I am the anti-hero

I certainly would have made a point of reviewing R. Scott Bakker’s books sooner if I had any idea that his response to my review would prove so vastly amusing:

This brings me to what I was most curious about, back when: What would Theo make of the thematics of the trilogy. To be honest, I thought this was where he would spill the most pixilated ink. Why? Because reading his blog, I realized that in many respects I had written the trilogy for him, for people who really, really, really think they’ve won the Magical Belief-and-Identity Lottery.

And this, if Vox Day is to be believed, is Theo in a nutshell. The Grand Prize Winner. Reading his blog, I had the impression of drawing circles inside of circles:

Fiscal conservatives…

Social and fiscal conservatives…

White, social and fiscal conservatives…

White, male, social and fiscal conservatives…

White, male, English-descended, social and fiscal conservatives…

White, male, English-descended, Anglican, social and fiscal conservatives…

I’m sure the list goes on, but this was as far as I was able to go. What began as snobbish hilarity quickly turned into consternation and a kind of baffled, dare I say? disgust. Discussions of partitioning America along more ‘rational’ identity-driven lines, of the ‘behavioural profile of African-Americans,’ of the ‘proper place of women,’ of the forced resettlement of immigrants, of the ‘flaws of democracy’ made me realize that Theo had more than a few fascistic leanings. I’m still shaking my head.

While I always appreciate a proper Genetic Fallacy, even more amusing is an inept one. I had no idea that I was a socially conservative Anglican, but now that I have been apprised of this I shall certainly do my best to acquire a Book of Common Prayer and start writing regular paeans to Sarah Palin and Rick Perry. I’m not precisely sure what “fiscal conservative” is supposed to mean nowadays, as this tends to sound rather like “gravity conservative” or “knows how to use an Excel spreadsheet” in light of the recent events in political economy. But I am white, male, and of English descent, to be sure. He could have even quite reasonably added “arrogant bastard” and “chick magnet” if he felt that would help his case somehow.

Of course, the Dread Ilk will no doubt see the humor inherent in the idea that the author of The Morality of Rape could possibly be “really, really, really offended” by its fictional depiction. Apparently Bakker didn’t get the “rape apologist” alert.

For all that he attempts to strike a contemplative pose, Bakker reveals a parochial and Panglossian view of the world as well as an ironic failure to contemplate its harsh and brutal reality even while attempting to portray it. And it is entertaining indeed to see the erstwhile champion of a thousand shades of grey proving my previous point about his adherence to a conventional substitute morality; on what basis could an amoralist possibly justify consternation and disgust? Aesthetics? As for the idea that a quad-lingual expatriate who has lived everywhere from Japan to Italy is an extreme example of parochialism, well, I can’t say I’m terribly concerned about what a Canadian who grew up in Ontario, went to university in Ontario, did grad school at Vanderbilt, and then moved back to Ontario happens to think on the matter….

His ideological ignorance is as nonsensical as his failure to understand the difference between diagnosis and prescription. Being one of the better-known libertarians in the media, #25 at the last ranking if I recall correctly, I am much, much farther away from any sort of fascist leanings than Bakker, whose politics appear to be fairly similar to those of the historical Italian Fascisti. And I should very much like to see Bakker attempt to defend ideas such as democracy being flawless, material sexual equality, and so forth, as it would likely prove even more entertaining than his inability to understand the aesthetic value of morality in fiction.

But all of this is beside the point. Either my criticism of his work stands or it does not. Is my review fair? Of course it is. I wouldn’t sacrifice my critical integrity simply to slam someone I disliked intensely and I don’t dislike Bakker. I don’t even know him. The more significant question is if my review of The Prince of Nothing is more accurate and relevant than those that have attempted to lionize Bakker as the third coming of George R.R. Martin. That, I leave to the readers to decide.

Bakker is a talented wordsmith. He is a very good world builder. He is more intelligent than the average genre writer, historically literate, and reasonably well-educated. Unfortunately, he is also an incompetent and juvenile philosopher who subscribes to an outmoded view of art. The latter tends to insert itself in the way of the stronger elements of his writing, particularly when it comes to the characters. Preaching no more lends itself to secular fiction than it does to religious fiction and should Bakker ever decide to control his instinctive desires to lecture and transgress, he will be the better writer for it.

But that is no concern of mine. It makes absolutely no difference to me if Bakker chooses to heed the criticism I have offered or not. I didn’t write the Black Gate review for his benefit and I am quite accustomed to most people ignoring me, regardless of whether I publicly advise them to buy gold at 323.30 (2002) or predict a $43,300 fall in housing prices (2008). I don’t expect Bakker to agree. I don’t even expect him to understand.

Instead of resorting to an ineffective ad hominem response, it would have been much more interesting if Bakker had simply explained why he felt it was so vital to show so much of the sex and rapine that fills his work, what it adds to the story, and why he feels his philosophical meanderings add to the story rather than detracting from it. However, give Bakker credit for correctly anticipating that I would like his work. I did. Being a fan of epic fantasy, I merely find it to be disappointing that he refuses to aim higher.

Kick Cameron out

The British Prime Minister is a lying, treacherous weasel and has to go:

David Cameron has ruled out a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union on the grounds that the UK had their say 36 years ago. A senior aide to the Prime Minister enraged eurosceptics yesterday by claiming that the UK must remain a member of the EU because Brussels bureaucrats have done ‘useful work’ on climate change and global poverty.

And he ignored the fact that no one under the age of 53 has ever had the chance to state their views on Brussels in a public vote.

Londonistan is burning, the Euro is disintegrating, and Cameron is still on holiday in Italy. I wouldn’t have thought it to be possible, but David Cameron is beginning to make Gordon Brown look like an honest, competent politician by way of comparison. But if “useful work” on nonexistent climate change and growing global poverty is really their best argument for staying in the EU, we should be able to count on Britain leaving it by next Tuesday.

The Conservative Party promised the British people a referendum. If the Conservative Prime Minister isn’t going to deliver one, he must resign.

WND column

Downgrading America

Over the last two months, numerous political commentators, as well as leading Democrats and Republicans, have vehemently insisted that a deal on the debt ceiling was necessary to avoid debt default and credit downgrades. Unsurprisingly, these happened to be the same commentators and politicians who did not see the crisis of 2008 coming and who have swallowed whole the ludicrous claim of “economic recovery” still being pushed by the Federal Reserve and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

And once more, all of these public Panglosses have been proven wrong by events. This time, however, it took only three days to demonstrate their observable incompetence. The downgrade of U.S. credit was inevitable because the salient issue was never the debt ceiling or the inability of the federal government to borrow more money, but rather, the fact that it was already borrowing too much.