Author: VD

The problem with time travel

The master of time travel fiction explains the fundamental problem with stories based on the concept:

The problem afflicting all time travel stories, which makes cause and effect paradoxical, is that time travel makes moral law is paradoxical.

In a universe without time travel, the things done by a man in the past are done.

What is in our past cannot be changed, and the future cannot be known. But introduce time travel, and, suddenly, anyone whose future actions you know (because he is from your past) can be treated as a creature without free will, that is, an entity with no moral self determination. He is an NPC.

This includes the past self of the time traveler himself: from the point of view of the Wednesday Dr Who, Tuesday Dr Who is a like a robot, or a historical character, someone who cannot change his actions because they are set in stone. An NPC.

With time travel, an immoral act like killing an innocent baby, whom the Time Traveler knows will grow up to be a tyrant, seems moral, and a moral act, like saving that same innocent baby, seems immoral.

To make matters worse, if the time traveler on Thursday wants to undo an act he did on Tuesday, such as killing a child fated to be a tyrant, and he leaps backward in time to shoot his Monday self in order to preempt the Tuesday attack on the child fated to be a tyrant, he is killing a man who is, at that moment on Monday, not yet guilty of any crime. Is this moral or immoral? Is this suicide or self defense?

So if yet another version of himself from his own future leaps out of Friday afternoon to land in front of Wednesday, pistols ready, to prevent his Thursday self before the fated this Monday crime of killing his Tuesday self preemptively, can the Wednesday time traveler rightfully defend himself?

Because if it is wrong for Thursday on Monday to kill his innocent younger self in order to prevent the killing of the child on Tuesday, logically, by the same token, it must also be wrong Friday to kill Thursday on Wednesday to prevent Thursday from killing Tuesday on Monday to prevent the prevention.

And yet, also equally logically, on Wednesday, the Time Traveler is guilty of killing a child, and so can be killed in retaliation, or, better yet, killed before he commits the crime, because, unlike human justice, time traveler justice actually can unmake the crime and restore the dead.

Therefore, logically, the fact that killing the innocent is immoral makes it moral for a time traveler to kill the innocent.

I won’t even mention the moral problems arising from the possibility that the tyrant the child is fated to become turns out, in a plot twist, to be the Time Traveler himself, and the one event that warped and embittered his young mind to set him on the path of tyranny was seeing all these murders taking place in the nursery when he was young.

That is the problem with time travel stories.

Mr. Wright is no doubt correct. That being said, his City Beyond Time is without question the greatest collection of time travel stories ever assembled.

Second beginning. This one brighter than the others:

I recall my first view of the city.

I thought it was a job interview. I had no other work, no future, and the best woman I had ever laid eyes on walked out on me the night before. I wasn’t in a great mood, but, at that point, I was willing to listen to anything.

Almost anything.

“Time travelers?” I said, trying to look chipper. I was trying to think of a polite way to say goodbye and get lost.

He didn’t look crazy. (The real crazies never do). Mr. Iapetus was a foreign-looking fellow in a long red coat of a fabric I didn’t recognize. He had dark, magnetic eyes, high cheekbones, and wore a narrow goatee.

His office was appointed with severe and restrained elegance. To one side, a row of dark bookshelves loomed; in the center was a wide mahogany desk, polished surface gleaming; to the other side, heavy drapes blocked a hidden length of window. I did not think it odd at the time to see bright sunlight shining from the carpet at the lower hem of the window drapes. But it had been raining outside when I entered the lobby just behind me.

Mr. Iapetus was standing by the window. He took up a fold of drapes in his hand. “I believe in what you might call the shock therapy method of indoctrination. It helps make the tedious period of disbelief more brief.”

A wide yank of his arm threw the drapes aside. A spill of blinding sunlight washed around me.
Blinking, I saw I was high up, overlooking a shining city. I had been on the ground floor when I came in. Now, I was miles up in the air. And glory was underfoot.

Everyone sees through conservatives now

The Babylon Bee goes for the conservative jugular:

Local conservative man Patrick Porkers thrashed liberals Tuesday for supporting policies that he himself will support in just five years.

From medicare for all and a wealth tax to free college and canceling student debt, the conservative systematically dismantled every policy liberals support, though he’s going to cave on every single one of these just a few years from now.

The man says he’s staunchly opposed to how fast progressives are changing things and prefers the conservative approach of changing the exact same things but just on a little bit of a delay.

“Liberals are ruining this country,” he said, shaking both his head and his fist. “They go and put forth all these radical ideas that will destroy the fabric of our society. Sure, I end up conceding ground to the libs and supporting policies I would have found appalling just five years ago. But I’ve got to be the voice of reason here and caution everyone against the very ideas I will come to agree with a short time from now.”

The important thing is that no one can call him racist. No one would be happier to vote for a black conservative than him! No one! And the second most important thing is that no one can call him anti-Semitic either. He not only believes in the Judeochristian values upon which America and Western civilization were founded, they fly an Israeli flag in the sanctuary at his church!

His virtue is impeccable.

A clear warning

The three primary anti-globalist powers are sending a very clear message to the prometheans of GloboSatan Inc: the planetary balance of power is shifting:

Iran, China, and Russia will hold in the coming weeks their first-ever joint war drills, which leaders say are meant to send a “message to the world” about increased military cooperation between the rogue countries.

The commander of Iran’s navy, Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi, said Wednesday that the Islamic Republic will team up with Moscow and Beijing within the next month to hold the mass war drills…. The joint war drills will be aimed at sending a message to the world, particularly Western nations, like the United States, that have sought to constrain Iran’s expanding military ambitions.

This gathering of resisting forces very likely accounts for the desperate sense of urgency that Dr. Charlton has observed among what he describes as the Ahrimanic evil of the global establishment:

The interesting aspect is the sheer urgency. There is a very obvious attempt to create a worldwide sense of emergency, of imminent cataclysm, of terrible things that are Just About To Happen… unless, we hand over complete power to the Establishment (preferably the-day-after-tomorrow, or quicker). And this handover – this Power Grab by the Global Establishment – is being aimed-at Very Soon; on a timescale of months, not years.

Like it or not, the reality is that the U.S. military has been the primary tool for global evil for the last 75 years, due to the invasion of the USA and the abandonment of the American principles of isolation, non-intervention, and the avoidance of entangling alliances. And now, having been converged and repurposed, the U.S. military is observably no longer able to perform its primary purpose, which is to defend the American people from enemies foreign and domestic.

Haunting

I don’t know if a band has ever gotten consistently better live over time than Babymetal. It’s astonishing to see how far they’ve come from the days of three girls dancing to a track of Doki Doki Morning. This is the last performance of Mikio, who died tragically in a freak accident one month after the Hiroshima concert. It’s a subtle tribute, but when Su sings “Nidoto ae-nai” which means “we shall never meet again”, you can see the camera switches momentarily to Mikio.

Apparently this song has only been performed live five times, never outside of Japan. Su’s voice keeps getting stronger over the years, and while one of the guitars are a bit sharp in the first solo, the additional layers provided by the live piano and strings make this my favorite version yet. Although Leda did the original arrangement, I think I like it best when Mikio and Ohmura play it together.

It’s always intriguing to see the way musically sensitive people react to this song. It’s not unusual for them to cry despite having no idea what the lyrics are or what the song is about. And understanding them really does not help at all….

We shall never meet again but I never want to forget you.
If the dream continues, I hope I never wake up from it.

Mailvox: the success dealers

A former candidate for Congress explains how it works:

Back in [REDACTED], I had been moved to righteous anger to run for political office, Congress, in my [REDACTED] district which was being weakly held by a non-progressive Democrat.  There were a number of Republican contenders, but the local party had picked one of their donors, an unfortunate blockhead with inherited money.  I took exception to this and pulled a Trump-to-Jeb! on the dude at every public engagement, which only earned the ire of the local party for my uppitiness and Ron Pauline views on government.

At a fundraiser dinner, I had a small coterie and the other candidates had theirs, larger and smaller, and I was surprised when a delegation of state Republicans – well known and connected – came over and asked me to join them at their table.  I obliged.  They showered me with compliments – how they liked my style, how I was clearly the one with the brains and ability to win etc – and then asked what path I was taking, where did I want to go: executive branch, senate, state politics, or if Congress was my goal.  I told them Congress was where I felt I could be most useful, and they pulled out a diagram that had my name on [a state organization] for a number of years, then county supervisor, then Congress.  They told me that this was not only the path they envisioned, but the path they could guarantee. Their words. All I had to do was drop out and endorse the blockhead. But he’ll lose, I argued, and explained exactly why.  They nodded in agreement and said, we know. That’s how we know you’ll win here in [REDACTED].

They were offering me a seat in Congress if I played their game, changed my views, endorsed their loser, and then they would rig the system to ensure victory. Not MY victory, but THEIR victory with me as their puppet. I told them no, thank you, I was my own man and I’d rise and fall on that merit. They said the doors were always open and then went to the next table where a woman was also running for the same seat. They showed her a different diagram.  Two years later she was the Republican nominee for US Senate.

God was looking out for me.  But the point is that you are absolutely right – there are people who will buy your soul and they roam about like wolves preying on the ambitious, vain, or naive.

I’ve personally seen this sort of thing play out in music, media, politics, and publishing. I’ve heard about it from those who were offered the ticket in Hollywood, both in television and in movies. David Chapelle has spoken openly about the latter… hence Africa. And the modus operandi is always more or less the same. One little knee, one little submission, is all they initially ask of you to give you whatever you want and more.

They are success dealers, and the first hit is almost free….

Keep this in mind if you’re tempted to accuse people of being jealous of those who are wealthier, more famous, or more successful. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I’m not jealous of anyone who has taken the ticket. I know the price they are paying and it isn’t one that I was willing to pay.

Don’t support those who hate you

Young white men are proving that the strategy works as the small liberal arts colleges are collapsing:

The financial struggles of New England liberal arts colleges have been in the news lately. “Marlboro planning to give campus and endowment to Emerson College” describes the end of 73 years of operation in Southern Vermont. “Can small liberal arts colleges survive the next decade?” (Christian Science Monitor)

A friend who has worked at the highest levels of college governance said that these bastions of righteousness in which white males are blamed for most things are having difficulty recruiting white males. Why does that matter? “Once the men stop attending,” he noted, “then women don’t want to enroll.”

Girls want to be where the boys are. And female-dominant activities and organizations lose status in both male and female eyes. These two truisms create a dynamic that prevents stasis, but also allow for a degree of predictability based on the current level of female involvement in any activity or organization.

It also helps explain why diversity is always destructive.

What he is waiting for

As I mentioned on the Darkstream last night, it is very obvious what the God-Emperor is waiting for before he unleashes The Storm. There is absolutely no point rushing in and arresting all of the Swamp’s denizens if the swampy judges are just going to let them all go like they did with the Antifa members who were charged with various felonies. First, it’s necessary to transform the federal judiciary.

HISTORIC RESTORATION OF THE JUDICIARY: President Trump is transforming our judiciary – appointing a historic number of Federal judges who will interpret the Constitution as written.

  • Working with the Senate, President Trump has now had 158 judicial nominees confirmed to the Federal bench – a historic transformation of the judiciary.
  • President Trump has nominated and had confirmed, two Supreme Court justices, 44 Circuit Court judges, and 112 District Court judges.
  • President Trump has appointed more circuit judges by this point in his presidency than any president in recent history.
  • Approximately 1 out of every 4 active judges on United States Courts of Appeals has been appointed by President Trump.
  • This historic transformation is only accelerating, with President Trump on pace to have more judges confirmed this year than in 2017 and 2018 combined.

This also puts the lie to those who claim President Trump hasn’t done anything. What he’s been doing is laying the foundation for substantive and meaningful action that will last beyond his two terms.

The Tokugawa shogunate was right

To ban Jesuits and Catholicism in Japan.

Pope Francis met with young people at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo on Monday, where he called on the country to “open your arms and welcome those who come, often after great suffering, to seek refuge in your country”, said Caritas Japan.

It said that due to the country’s restrictive laws, only 42 people obtained refugee status in 2018.

Any purportedly “Christian” organization that attempts to destroy nations is in service to the Devil. This Fake Pope is obviously a man of evil. As his concerns demonstrate, he is both in and of the world.

The last interview

I initially declined the interview request, but since I read the Unz Review myself and the interviewer only had a few substantive questions tangential to his very positive review of Alt-Hero, I took a few minutes to email him back. It’s not his fault, but in retrospect, I should have stuck with my instinctive reaction and declined to answer them, as a commenter here noted.

The comments on the UNZ article are a testament to moderating comments as they do here. It’s like a gamma bomb went off under the article.

Precisely. The way the anklebiters who stalk this place and the Darkstream in vain will immediately rush to any media mention of any kind is yet another good reason not to talk to anyone, media or not. Even when the interview is friendly, positive, and substantive, there’s always at least some degree of nonsense and negativity that results from it.

This little gamma bomb is orders of magnitude smaller than the fallout from my previous interview with Bleeding Cool, but nevertheless underlines the point that there is zero net benefit to me from bothering to talk to anyone who isn’t on Unauthorized. So, this little Kersey interview will likely be the last one I give to anyone for the time being. I have my own channels of communication; I have no need for anyone else’s. Anyone who wants to know what I think has dozens of books, hundreds of columns, hundreds of videos, and thousands of blog posts available to them that are more than capable of satisfying their curiosity.

And for those who believe my decision has anything to do with being thin-skinned or unable to take criticism, all I can say is you’re far too short for this ride. What I’ve learned over the years is that all answering questions does is to raise more questions, and that talking to anyone in any form of media, no matter how friendly, places you into an endless cycle of feeding various false narratives even as you attempt to counteract them. There is simply no reason to devote even a modicum of time to activities that are neither productive nor enjoyable.

So, the answer to “will you talk to X?” is an unambiguous NO. It doesn’t matter who it is, whether I like them or not, that you sincerely believe our views are harmonious, or what the purported subject is. While I may interview the occasional author on the Darkstream, I do not plan to publicly speak to anyone who is not on Unauthorized.

The blessings of free trade

It’s interesting to see that the West is suddenly discovering the intrinsic dangers of free trade when it is China providing services to other nations:

China could shut off the Philippines’ power grid at will, a report has warned – highlighting fears about Beijing’s role in infrastructure around the world. A report for Philippine lawmakers found that the country’s national security ‘is completely compromised’ by China’s access to the power grid.

Chinese engineers have exclusive access to parts of the system and could shut it down remotely, the report seen by CNN reveals. The findings will spark alarm in the West where China is helping to build a new nuclear power station in the UK and has already faced sanctions from the US.

But why would this cause any problems? Surely the New Filipinos who happen to be of Chinese descent love their new country and are just as Filipino as those whose great-great-grandparents were born in Manila are!

Paper nationalism is, and has always been, a shameless lie told by immigrants to advantage themselves vis-a-vis the native populations. 

And who cares if China can shut off the Philippines’ power grid anyhow. The important thing is that the arrangement is more economically efficient, right? And nothing is more important than economic efficiency!