Category: Uncategorized

This blog goes to 23

 In which George Martin is slapped back into reality:

 nathancherolis
Apr. 12th, 2015 03:37 pm (UTC)
Re: Vox Day the anarchist
George… do you have any idea how many people read Vox’s blog and love it?

The traffic widget is right there for all to see George.

The man has what is arguably the most read blog in all of science fiction. It may be the most read science fiction website of any type.

People keep underestimating him. People keep thinking that he cannot possibly be this popular and have this many supporters.

Accept it. He is. He does.

grrm
Apr. 12th, 2015 08:06 pm (UTC)
Re: Vox Day the anarchist
Maybe so. If that’s true, it is terrifying.

Rabbits. They are so predictable. You’d think they would understand that is why it is called the Evil LEGION of Evil, not the Evil CENTURY of Evil or Evil COHORT of Evil. And he’s still insulting you, my readers and supporters, even after being warned.

grrm
Apr. 12th, 2015 08:44 pm (UTC)
Re: Who’s sufficient enough conservative to denounce Day?
Yes, generally speaking, “ignore the troll” is a good approach.

But with Vox, as with Hate, it does not seem to have worked. Ignored, they just grow, bigger and bigger, attracting more and more toads to their respective ponds.

 I’m sure everyone here will be shocked to learn that this fearsome chief rabbit is waddling away as fast as he can rather than engage in the honest dialogue for which he was calling.

 douglas_wardell
Apr. 13th, 2015 12:34 am (UTC)
On Day, Denouncements and Debates
While I’ve only been a lurker here, I’ve been reading your blog slightly longer than Vox’s and I will lose a great deal of respect for you if you decline the opportunity to debate him on the topic(s) of your choosing.

As for why I don’t denounce him, the things you’ve stated about him are falsehoods and misrepresentations of his positions. To be fair, he does sometimes bait the hook in such a way that the casual observer may misinterpret his positions to be much more inflammatory than they really are, but that’s a far cry from what he’s actually being accused of here and elsewhere.

Beyond that, any fair examination of speech from him and about him will make clear that the torrent of “hate-speech” is not flowing in the direction you assert.

If you disagree with me, you might as well debate your assertions with Vox point-by-point since he’s made the offer. Either you find out you were wrong and the accusations were unfair, or you prove your points and get at least some of the condemnation you’ve been calling for. Either should be a win for you.

grrm
Apr. 13th, 2015 04:34 am (UTC)
Re: On Day, Denouncements and Debates
What I have asserted is that “torrent of hate speech” is flowing in both directions. That’s why I explicitly linked Vox Day and Requires Hate in the same post.

You know, it is not as if Day’s statements were misreported, or distorted, or hard to find. They are all right up there on the internet. Anyone can find them in a few moments of Googling. They say what they say. Dancing around and saying, “yes, but they did not mean what they seem to mean” is ingenuous at best.

I can already tell you the result of a “debate” between me and Vox Day. Those who lean left will say I won, those who lean right will say he won, and positions will only harden.

The debate should be between VD and someone like Correia or Torgensen, between a Rabid Puppy and a Sad Puppy, to determine who really speaks for this “movement” and what its goals are.

George knows what they mean. The amusing thing is that someone did bring Jemisin’s statements to his attention, and he promptly began trying to argue context. Context! I’m sort of curious as to what context would make statements like “George Martin is racist as fuck” or “George RR Martin is a self-described pedophile, rapist, kitten-abuser, and a few other flavors of sex criminal” acceptable.

It says it on the Internet, it must be true! He also responded to the International Lord of Hate, mostly by discounting his personal experiences, although he does appear to be realistic about the consequences of open conflict in the SF world.

[[CORREIA: If the people attacking us don’t chill out, more of my people
are going to get pissed off, and it might hit a 12 or 13 next year.
:)]]

OH, believe me, I know. And we’ll go right up to 13 with
you. And Vox Day and his band of not-so-merry-men will go right to 23.
And then the Hugos will pretty much be dead, and the world of science
fiction will be that much the poorer.

That does sound like us, doesn’t it? Forget 11. THIS BLOG GOES TO 23!

New reader: where to start?

A new reader wonders where the best place to start reading my fiction is:

I’ve been enjoying your blog, and wanted to know – what would be the best book of yours for a new reader to start with? I’m a big sci-fi fan, but haven’t actually read your fiction yet. If it matters, my tastes are a bit older – Orson Scott Card, William Gibson, Arthur C. Clarke, etc. Terry Brooks and Tolkien when it comes to fantasy. Might be good to have a “new reader” link.

My first instinct is to say QM: AMP for those who lean SF and AMB, followed by ATOB, for those who lean fantasy. But I also think the author is among the least reliable authorities in this regard, so I’ll leave it up to the Ilk to sort it out in the comments. If you all can reach a consensus, I’ll post it here and create a New Reader link in the sidebar.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume no one thinks that either REBEL MOON or THE RETURN OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION is the optimal starting point.

And on the Sad Puppy front, Mad Genius Dave Freer just asks the question that I did about the Toad of (formerly) Tor, only he asks it about the Guardian as well.

The chances of a ‘hit’ piece, intended to denigrate, on an American populist author with little impact on his British scene, in a publication that tends to Ahrt, are slim. The chance of it happening the very day that the Hugo Nomination shortlist is released, targeting an audience who might possibly go to LonCon, but probably would not have heard of Larry Correia? In other words, to poison minds well before they saw their voter packets…

The chance that this happened purely by accident – about the same as a fully armed nuclear missile turning into a Sperm whale a few seconds before impact.

Let’s get to a second fact. Just the facts. A year later, TNH launched a furious tirade on her blog, ‘Making Light’… attacking the Sad Puppies for sweeping the Hugo Noms. Threatening to bring down retribution for being nominated. Now coming from such a powerful person in Traditional Publishing, and one with… shall we say wide influence (the links are… telling) this is fairly serious bullying. Abuse of power.

But the important thing is WHEN IT HAPPENED.

It happened BEFORE the embargo was lifted.

These facts lead inexorably to a question so simple and so obvious I can’t see how anyone can miss it asking it:

HOW DID DAMIAN WALTER AND TERESA NIELSEN HAYDEN KNOW LARRY AND THE SAD PUPPIES HAD BEEN NOMINATED WHEN IT WAS EMBARGOED?

I think this pair of tweets from 2013 will explain a lot. Notice the connection between David Barnett, John Scalzi, and Damien Walter. And then notice who publishes David Barnett. Still dubious about a quiet circle of conspiracy centered around Tor Books?

When nukes are inevitable…

Relax and enjoy the decline of total war. Jerry Pournelle discusses the inevitability of Iranian nukes with a reader:

Assuming that we were to bomb Iran, how long could we expect to set back their nuclear program?


Let’s
assume, for the moment, a “surgical” strike whose targets are all
nuclear facilities. Comments I’ve read from people who ought to know
something maintain that we’d probably set back the program two or three
years; with the predictable consequence that Iran would immediately
begin the best financed and most clandestine program it could to produce
nuclear weapons *immediately*.

Here, I think, we run into the North
Korea quandary. It is already possible for any tyrant to make the case
that, however appalling you are, if you have nuclear weapons the United
States will leave you alone; whereas if you do not have nuclear weapons
you live on sufferance. That’s awkward. While I certainly wouldn’t want
to encourage nuclear proliferation, I’m not sure it’s helpful to
persuade tyrants that they *really, really need* nuclear weapons.

Now,
of course, the problem could perhaps be “solved” by strikes aimed not
at nuclear plants but at destroying Iran as a civilization. At which
point we really would have become a Satan. Or, at least, an apocalyptic
Babylon.

So my question to Mr. Stephens would be: short of becoming
monsters, there is probably no permanent way to prevent Iran from
getting nuclear weapons. In consequence, do we really want to pursue a
strategy whose likely result would be to urge them to get the bomb
*really quickly?* Or are delaying tactics more likely to produce useful
results?

Buying time is always a useful purchase. And perhaps the horse will learn to sing.
 
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

Allan Johnson puts the case well and compellingly. Our choices are
few, and our technical capabilities are uncertain. Strikes at Iranian
nuclear capabilities will be bloody given their locations. Commando
style raids would make the destruction more thorough but would be far
more costly. The Iranians have been clever in their designs and
location. Uncertainties about the success of a surgical denuclearization
attack are quite high for the US or any conceivable coalition working
with us.

Of course that is doubly, triply, true for Israel; to assure the
attack’s success might require nuclear weapons, and I am quite certain
that at least some IDF generals have said this to the War Cabinet. First
use of nuclear weapons has so many devastating diplomatic and domestic
political consequences that I doubt Mr. Netanyahu would seriously
consider it.

Buying time may be all that is possible.

And buying time is pointless except for the small minority who benefit from the delay. In some cases, such as the Federal Reserve’s decision to delay the inevitable bankruptcies of the indebted, buying time has made the situation observably worse for most.

The real question is if Israel genuinely feels itself threatened by a nuclear Iran or not. Considering that Martin van Creveld has been very clear about the fact that it does not, we can safely discount the likelihood that Israel will do anything, much less nuke Iran. I don’t doubt that Israel would do so if they perceived a legitimate  existential threat, but the fact that they have not done so already suffices to indicate that they do not.

After reading several of van Creveld’s books from THE TRANSFORMATION OF WAR to A HISTORY OF STRATEGY and TECHNOLOGY AND WAR, it has become very clear that the primary military function of nuclear weapons is to take 20th century total war off the table. This does not mean that war will not take place, but rather, that it will take place on a scale more similar to those wars prior to the mass mobilizations of entire populations and the targeting of enemy civilians.

Remember, war has historically almost NEVER been primarily about killing the enemy, but rather destroying his will to fight by demoralizing him. And that should be of considerably more concern to an utterly, and literally, de-moralized West than one more nation possessing weapons it has no intention of using unless attacked.

Mailvox: refuting the rhetorical

JD has a suggestion which makes superficial sense, although I tend to doubt it will accomplish anything given the inability of rhetorical minds to change based on information:

I got an idea reading your latest post about George R. R. Martin baiting the hook. Martin just reiterates the same litany of labels/misrepresentations that people love to affix to you but I seriously doubt he has spent any time on your blog or twitter feed looking for the relevant posts and quotes to read for himself- so maybe it would be useful to put them all together in one convenient place for all to read. I am suggesting you put together a FAQ relating to Sad/Rabid Puppies and yourself in general that you put front and center on your blog. I think it could serve a variety of purposes. (It would be a fun little museum of SJW’s lies and misrepresentations about you and would be more fun to browse than a freak show at the circus.) 

I have spent a fair amount of time lately around the web and social media reading what your detractors say about you and Sad/Rabid puppies. Whether it is blog, Reddit, Twitter, etc., they trot out the same accusations: “he said black people are savages, he thinks it’s okay to throw acid in women’s faces, he got kicked out of the SFWA because he used the SFWA communication channels to spread racism, he is a white-supremacist, he is a Christian dominionist, he has said that he hates women, he is trying to destroy the Hugos, he gamed the Hugos…”

I know you have addressed these kinds of things as you have encountered them, but I think it would be helpful to put them all in one place, especially now that the mainstream media is taking notice of the Hugo situation. Quote the SJW’s accusation, link to the relevant blog entries if applicable, define yourself in your own words, and most importantly- make people accountable for twisting your words and misrepresenting you. I’m sure the Ilk wouldn’t mind helping you collect and catalogue the slanders against you.

As I said, I’m skeptical, but it can’t hurt. To address the specific accusations:

  1. I did not say black people are savages. I said one black individual, N.K. Jemisin, was a half-savage. I was wrong. She is, we are reliably informed by Ms Jemisin herself, a full savage. In addition to falsely claiming that I am “a self-described
    misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole”, the charming Ms Jemisin has also claimed “a) that Heinlein was racist as *fuck*,
    and b) most of science fiction fandom was too.” It’s mildly amusing to see science fiction fandom fall all over itself to call me racist in defense of the woman who has openly, and repeatedly, declared that they are racists.
  2. I do not think it is okay to throw acid in women’s faces for any reason. I do think the Taliban are rational and that their policy of mutilating and murdering those who threaten their way of life reflects their objectives and their ruthlessness rather than an inability to think rationally. The fact that they have successively defeated the Red Army and NATO in Afghanistan tends to support my case.
  3. I was not kicked out of SFWA for any reason. The SFWA Board voted to expel me, but the membership never followed suit as required by the bylaws at the time. And no reason was given by the SFWA Board for its vote. The real reason was that Patrick Nielsen Hayden and John Scalzi refused to pay their dues to SFWA and presented the board with choice between me and a Senior Editor at Tor Books as well as its three-time former president.
  4. I am not a white supremacist. I am a Native American with considerable Mexican heritage. Mexican Revolutionary heritage to be precise. I am not a supremacist of any kind, but I would be better described as an East Asian supremacist. I tend to prefer Western European culture, specifically Italian culture, but I am an East Asian Studies major, I lived and studied in Japan, and I still speak some Japanese.
  5. I could not unreasonably be described as a small-d Christian dominionist, but I am more accurately described as a Western Civilizationist. I believe that any civilized Western society will be a Christian one or it will cease to be civilized… if it manages to survive at all. The explosion of Christianity throughout Asia versus Western postchristianity is one reason I think the future favors Asian civilization in the long term. I think Europe is in the process of going back to being the historical sideshow it was prior to the 1500s.
  6. I am not trying to destroy the Hugo Awards. I am indifferent to their fate.
  7. I did not game the 2014 Hugo Awards. After being falsely accused of doing so by numerous parties, I decided to demonstrate the absurdity of the accusation by gaming the 2015 Awards. I trust my innocence with regards to the 2014 Awards is now clear and I look forward to receiving apologies from those who falsely accused me.

Anything else? I tend to doubt knowing the relevant facts will affect many opinions, for the obvious reason that if you are inclined to write someone off completely because you heard they once called someone a “half-savage”, you are providing a very strong indication that your mind is limited to the rhetorical level.

Indeed, the fact that the same ungrammatical excerpt chopped out of the middle of a sentence keeps being trotted out again and again should alert the dialectical mind to the probability that there simply isn’t very much, if any, there there. The complete sentence, which for obvious reasons is almost never quoted, much less quoted in context, is this:


“Being an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more
understanding of what it took to build a new literature by “a bunch of
beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” than an illiterate Igbotu
tribesman has of how to build a jet engine, Jemisin clearly does not
understand that her dishonest call for “reconciliation” and even more
diversity within SF/F is tantamount to a call for its decline into
irrelevance.”

But it is entirely obvious that we’re not dealing with dialectical minds capable of logic, we’re dealing with rhetorical minds that are swayed solely by emotion. Such minds can be changed, but not by facts and reason. The more successful we are, and the more staunchly we stand, the more of them that will come over to our side for a whole host of “reasons” that will neither make sense to us nor withstand logical scrutiny.

Especially when this is what passes for the honest dialogue and debate from the other side when they come to comment here:

What does a right-wing fundamentalist southern Baptist do that’s “civilized”? – fuck his sister? Sodomize pigs and goats? Masturbate with his own gun? Beat his wife with a copy of the Bible? Dress in white sheets while spewing the kind of racist garbage that Hitler would be proud of? Too bad your mum didn’t abort you. At least you’re an old fuck who will die before me, so I can laugh over how few people come to your funeral.

Show or skedaddle?

George Martin responds to my offer of honest dialogue and a debate:

So… I post here about how pleased I was to enjoy one good night, away from all this Puppygate shit, and you feel the need to drag Vox Day into it?

What would be the subject of this “debate?” Whether women should have the vote? Whether black people are savages or only half-savages?

Perhaps after that debate, I could debate Requires Hate on whether writers should have acid thrown in their faces, or just be raped by dogs.

We can debate whatever issues are so important that you claimed you wanted to be able to debate when you said: “Can’t we just debate the issues?”

I am giving you that opportunity. The opportunity you said you wanted.

We can certainly debate whether women should have the vote if you wish. We can debate whether black people are savages or half-savages, if that is a subject that is of particular interest to you.

I think it would be more interesting to debate your demand for no tolerance of hatespeech and the proper limits of free speech. There is also the strange contention that Requires Hate and I “are twins. Mirror images of one another.” You made the assertion. You have neither recanted nor apologized for it. Therefore, it seems a reasonable subject of honest dialogue and debate, given that I very much disagree with the assertion. Alternatively, we could debate the long term ramifications of the No Award tactic, the quality of the 2015 Best Novel shortlist compared to past Hugo shortlists, or any other aspect of Puppygate that you might find interesting.

The point, Mr. Martin, is that you said debate and honest dialogue are important. You are one of the biggest and best-known figures who claims to be on the side of those you call “the good guys” in SF fandom. I am the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil and a rising figure in science fiction. If you cannot bother to engage in honest dialogue with me, then why should any of the less famous, less notorious, less influential individuals on either side of the ideological divide in science fiction bother to do so either?

I’m entirely comfortable with the idea of an open, all-out ideological war. War-War is intrinsically more entertaining than Talk-Talk, after all. Are you?

Now, it’s possible that you didn’t mean what you wrote. It’s possible that you are just another posturing SJW, who puffs and preens and bluffs until he is called out, then promptly runs away. Many of my readers, who are also your readers, believe that. But I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you transparently were not willing to give me.

If you want to run away and claim that you are too busy doing Very Important Things to engage in what you said was required, that’s absolutely fine with me. I can certainly use that to my advantage. I have with others who ran away in the past. But because I have enjoyed some of your work since “Sandkings”, I will violate Napoleon’s dictum and point out that you will likely end up hearing my name a lot more often if you run away than if you do not.

Mailvox: an offer to debate George Martin

n4apound quotes George Martin and proposes what Mr. Martin has said he is seeking.

“[Vox Day is] spewing forth the venom of hatred and violence, poisoning any attempt at honest dialogue.”

Honest question: Can you point to a real example of this?  (Poisoning honest dialogue, as opposed to an internet pissing match.) Since you seem to be referencing direct knowledge, have you personally ever attempted an honest dialogue with Vox Day? As a reader of VD, I thoroughly doubt your claim.  I have read VD dismantle opponents’ arguments logically, sometimes using rhetorical flair as well, but I have never seen him use hatred and violence to poison an attempt at honest dialogue. In fact, he seems to *relish* honest dialogue.

“When we disagree, is it really necessary to spit and snap at each other, to throw around insults and obscenities, to make death threads, rape threats? Can’t we just debate the issues?”

Good questions.  I say that (since I am a fan of VD’s books) as a hate-enabling toad or something like that.

“Can’t we just debate the issues?”

Since you are calling for a “conservative in the house with the courage and integrity… honest and brave enough” to denounce VD, perhaps you would lead the way in displaying those attributes and make your specific case against him (or his part in the Hugo noms) in a new post and invite VD to respond.

As a voice of liberal moderation and reason, if you made a good-faith effort to reach out and VD responds with threats and hatred as you portray, then I guarantee that your effort to marginalize him will be greatly aided.  I imagine at that point you would even get conservatives to denounce him as you desire.  You would absolutely OWN the moral high ground.  Or if you were able to reason him away from his “extreme” positions, even slightly, you would win that way as well.

(Of course, it may be too late for an honest dialogue now that you have attacked not just him but his benighted fans.  He has a policy regarding that.)

The only way you lose in such an endeavor is if the hyperbole(?) in your post above is shown to be wrong.  And is that really a loss?

I am quite willing to debate Mr. Martin blog-to-blog on any subject he chooses. In fact, I will go so far as to guarantee that if I resort to threats and hatred in the course of that debate, I will ask both Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia to denounce me in the strongest possible terms.

We certainly can debate the issues. I have debated economics, evolution, the existence of gods, and even ancient philosophical skepticism without any need to resort to threats, hatred, or even rancor. But it is difficult to debate when SJWs constantly run away from debate whenever it is proposed to them.

I once offered a debate on racism to Jason Sanford. He ran away from it, declaring that some things could not be debated. I once responded to PZ Myers’s call to debate the existence of God. He ran away from it, claiming that I was a crackpot. I subsequently offered to debate him in his field of expertise, but he ran away from that too. A third party proposed a debate between me and John Scalzi. I accepted, whereas John Scalzi ran away from it.

You have asked if we cannot simply debate the issues. I say we can. I am entirely willing to debate the issues with you without spitting and snapping, without throwing around insults and obscenities, and without threatening to rape or kill you, if you are willing to do the same. My readership is considerably smaller than yours, but it is not insubstantial; my blogs now see 1.6 million pageviews per month. In the interest of amity within the science fiction community, I am even willing to overlook the fact that you have repeated various falsehoods about me, concocted some fascinating new ones, and insulted my loyal readers by calling them “toads”.

Nevertheless, I am willing to debate the issues, Mr. Martin. I am willing to engage in honest dialogue. Are you?

Kenneth Branagh is Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Apostle John may be black now, but I don’t think Hollywood can truly claim to be colorblind until Branagh plays Martin Luther King, Jr., Jet Li plays Nelson Mandela, and an Esquimaux plays Othello.

From Idris Elba’s gritty portrayal of London detective John Luther, to Dennis Haysbert’s calm, cool and collected President Palmer in “24″ (oh, to have a black president like THAT!), to Denzell Washington and Morgan Freeman in just about any role, black actors have enriched the big and small screens, adding richness, humor, depth and, well, color to our entertainment experience.

So why did I cringe a little when I first saw Gambian actor Babou Ceesay as the Apostle John and Chinese/Zimbabwean actress Chipo Chung as Mary Magdalene standing beside the mother of Jesus during Sunday’s NBC broadcast of the first episode of “A.D. The Bible Continues”? Did my inherent, inborn “racism” as a Southern white dude (go ahead, insert your favorite toothless, ignorant redneck joke here) finally subconsciously kick in, robbing me of the rich, diverse, multicultural experience the filmmakers were obviously trying to bring me with their forward-thinking casting?

Why must every historical movie these days, particularly those that deal with biblical topics, be subjected to a diversity “litmus test”? With apologies to Afrocentrists everywhere (OK, not really), while it’s possible there were black people in the vicinity of Judea during the time of Christ, there is no way, absolutely no way, John the Apostle was black. No serious historian believes this.

Of course, by then, the SJWs will be demanding that Whoopi Goldberg play Romeo. Because transist.

Who is the racist, George?

So, who is more reasonably deemed “racist as fuck”, a white man active in science fiction fandom who created one of the most racially iconic scenes of the last decade and is openly trying to exclude a Native American from the science fiction world, or a part-Mexican Native American who dares to respond to people attacking him? I remember seeing that scene myself and thinking: “seriously, the white girl Christ?”

Last summer, in the finale of Game of Thrones’ third season, mother of dragons Daenerys Targaryen stood outside the walls of Yunkai waiting for the slaves she just freed, hoping to convince them to join her army as free men. Daenerys, the white-blonde queen traded moons ago to the Dothraki by her brother, moves into the crowd of outstretched brown arms as they chant “mhysa”, which, we learn, means “mother” in their native tongue, and is carried into the crowd as the camera pulls back to show her floating in the middle of this sea of arms like the bright planet in a constellation of darkness.

I turned to my husband and said: “No one at HBO remembers the visual impact of slavery, I guess?” It was at that moment I decided to stop watching it. I’m aware that Game of Thrones is a TV show, a work of fiction, but having invested in it for three seasons, I no longer trusted the creators to bridge the gap of thoughtful conversation between action and intent. How much misogyny and racism are we expected to put up with in the name of entertainment?

 
Save us, little white girl!

The man who came up with this imagery is calling me racist? And doing so because I generously described a deranged black woman as a “half-savage” after she described Robert Heinlein as “racist as fuck”, most of science fiction fandom as “racist as fuck” and me as “a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole.” I tend to doubt Martin has any idea who and what he is defending when he attacks me.

I am not. And no doubt Dr. Martin van Creveld, the brilliant Israeli military historian I have the honor of editing and publishing, would be very surprised to learn about the anti-Semitism I supposedly proclaim so loudly. I know I was. Needless to say, I have never described myself as any of those things. Nor am I any of those things.

As it happens, my novelette that was nominated for the Hugo last year, “Opera Vita Aeterna” from The Last Witchking, is about a deep and abiding friendship between two individuals of different races, an elven sorcerer and a human monk. It is not a story of hate, but of three loves, the love of knowledge, the love of God, and the love of a friend. Another short story in that mini-collection, “The Hoblets of Wiccam Fensboro”, is a story about a reluctantly righteous goblin saving innocent hoblets from the hoblet-hating orcs who occupy his village.

I am absolutely nothing like Requires Hate. When Martin says “Make no mistake. Vox Day and Requires Hate are twins. Mirror images of one another.” he not only makes a mistake, he lies.

John O’Neill says I’m the most hated man in SF, but honestly, I don’t think we’ve even come close to maximizing the hate yet. All we need now is for George Martin to have a heart attack from the stress brought on by attacking #GamerGate, thereby enraging all the Westeros fans who haven’t given up hope that Martin has a Secret Master Plan to salvage the series and reverse the disaster of the last two books. Of course, the Torlings would inevitably put it all down to my cunning plan to market Castalia House in general and ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT in particular.

“Vox Day is ruthless! George RR Martin’s untimely death just proves he will STOP AT NOTHING!”

Anyhow, this tweet amused me: Be especially nice to @GRRMspeaking at the moment. He’s getting much flack right now. 

Do you think? Because I was deeply moved by his plight, I felt I would be remiss if I failed to respond:

@GRRMspeaking My response to you is here: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/04/who-is-racist-george.html … I think it is clear who is, and is not, “racist as fuck”. #SadPuppies

@GRRMspeaking Now those you called “toads” will respond. Only they’re not toads. They are the Dread Ilk and they are wolves.

George Martin baits the hook

Anyone who read A Dance with Dragons is aware that George R.R. Martin has lost it. Hell, I wrote A Throne of Bones partly because, after finishing that tedious, pointless slog of a poorly edited doorstopper, my first thought was, “I’m no great writer, but dammit, even I can do better than that shit.”

It seems a few people agreed, as ATOB has a higher rating on Amazon than ADWD, 4.2 to 3.9.

Anyhow, it’s probably a mercy that instead of further mutilating his literary legacy, he’s decided to spend the last few days waxing ignorant with regards to #GamerGate, Sad Puppies, Rabid Puppies, and the Hugo Awards. I was particularly amused by his belated Appeal to Divide and Conquer.

I do believe that there are decent, honest, well-intentioned conservatives in our field, many of whom are deeply involved in the Sad Puppies movement. Brad Torgensen and Larry Correia among them; my disagreements with them so far have been on the issues, but I don’t believe that they are racists, sexists, misogynists, bigots, or haters. But I do have a question for you:

When are you going to do something about Vox Day?

Make no mistake. Vox Day and Requires Hate are twins. Mirror images of one another. The Toad of the West, the Toad of East, each of them spewing forth the venom of hatred and violence, poisoning any attempt at honest dialogue. Requires Hate had her acolytes and enablers, and so does Vox Day, and it is from those toads that they derive their power.

Liberals and moderates and “SJWs” can denounce Day all they want, and it only serves to generate more hate, more division, more death threats. His followers will just shrug that off. But if some respected figure from the right were to speak up, well, maybe someone would listen. But do we have a conservative in the house with the courage and integrity of Laura Mixon, someone honest enough and brave enough to denounce the excesses of their “own side?”

First of all, the only Toad in science fiction is The Toad of (formerly) Tor, Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Second, neither the Ilk nor the Dread Ilk are toads. They are intelligent individuals who are entirely capable of thinking for themselves, and unlike the foolish Mr. Martin, they’re not stupid and gullible enough to swallow every false narrative put forth by SJWs in the media. Nor do they deserve to be insulted by a fat old fool who can’t be bothered to learn any of the salient facts before deciding to pontificate on the subject.

And third, it is amusing that Mr. Martin seems to seriously believe this is the first time any of us have seen this sort of Two-Minute-Hate Bait before. “Why, Mr. Decent, Honest, Well-Intentioned Conservative, if only you will join us in our ritual denouncing of today’s Emanuel Goldstein, we will be nice to you and pretend to respect you… for as long as we need you.”

Just how dumb does he think everyone on the right side of the political spectrum is anyhow?

Every member of the Evil Legion of Evil has been offered this deal if only they will abjure their Supreme Dark Lord, most of them multiple times. Every single one of them has spurned it, whether they agree with me about anything or not, because they all know exactly how forked the tongue is that speaks such deceitful promises.

Hell, I was offered the same deal myself if only I would disavow Roosh of Return of Kings and Reaxxion. To which my answer was simple and straightforward: “No, absolutely not.” This isn’t even the first time an SJW has broached the idea publicly:

  •  “There’s only one way to deal with people like Day, who see themselves as above basic human decency, and that is to cut them out of the community like a tumour. Shun them, ignore them, no-platform the hell out of them. Our conventions, our fanzines, our anthologies, our community is not open to people whose racist arguments could have come straight from the mouths of slave-owners.” (April 19, 2014)
  •  “How do you bring the weight of community disapproval on someone who isn’t part of the community?” (March 30, 2015)

Give a man a platform and he will speak his mind. Deny him a platform and he will build his own… and you will never silence him again. Rabbits always think that the only possible response to being shunned is to a) submit or b) vanish. The problem, of course, is that some of us aren’t rabbits.

And that’s why the SJWs are desperately appealing to Entertainment Weekly and George RR Martin and The Guardian and anyone and anything else that will swallow their false narrative. They are terrified because they know we are in the process of building a platform and that will mean they no longer have any influence or control over us. Over any of us.

As for Mr. Martin, it’s observably two books past time for him to hang it up and hand over A Song of Ice and Fire to Brandon Sanderson or Joe Abercrombie. Although my personal vote would be for R. Scott Bakker, just because it would be hilarious to see a horde of shape-shifting, black-seed spewing rape demons unleashed on Westeros without warning. What’s the point of featuring pointless nihilism if you don’t embrace it to the full?

An unexpected betrayal

Both Israelis and American Jews are beginning the learn the cost of being House Jews for the Democratic Party:

Sometime in the fall of 2008 I sat down at my desk and banged out an impassioned letter to my sister. She was on the fence, I knew, about the young senator from Illinois who was running for president. There was some talk in the family that perhaps, on at least one occasion, during the Bush years, she had voted Republican.

We chalked it up to her decision, made as a college freshman, to marry a skilled and caring med student, who hailed from Michigan and loved cars. He drove a Chevy, Grand Am — candy red, I think — and called the city of his birth Dee-troit.

Sure, we realized, he was a terrific father and a stand-up guy all around, but he distrusted all things organic — he was in the habit of scrubbing my sister’s farmers’ market apples with hot water and soap — and he wore jeans while skiing. He loved mayonnaise and iceberg lettuce, had a soft spot for ATVs and leaf-blowers.

In short, we didn’t ask who he voted for — there was some hope that he might be a Libertarian — but, in the fall of 2008, the facts seemed quite clear: He was going with John McCain and Sarah Palin. My sister, I feared, might follow suit.

And so I took to the computer. In an email entitled “Politics” — which I reread this week for the first time in the wake of the nuclear framework deal agreed upon in Lausanne, a deal that has left me with the clammy feeling of anticipated betrayal — I spoke about the horrors of the American prison system and the plague of racism that continue to rot America from the inside; I spoke about drugs and how only people of color are incarcerated for using and dealing them, while people like George W. Bush and every other person I knew in college was free to pull bong hits, take acid, and boil ‘shrooms to his or her heart’s content. I think I spoke about African-American role models and education and gay rights. I even told her to read Frederick Douglass.

Then I lampooned McCain for never having sent an email and mentioned his age. “McCain is 72,” I wrote. “He has had four of five bouts of melanoma. He spent five and a half years in a POW camp. He is dad’s age. Dad is in great shape for his age. He has not been to the Hanoi Hilton. Yet he falls asleep at dinner regularly. Something could happen to McCain. In walks the moose hunter.”

As for Israel, I said with all the authority I could muster, it didn’t really matter. No president has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The United States believes in a two-state solution. The occupation of the West Bank and its subsequent settlement with civilians made sense historically, emotionally, but was a horrid piece of irony: The nation that had lived under persecution for two thousand years because of its statelessness had, in a sublime moment, carved out a state in its ancient homeland and revived its wizened language only to sacrifice that historic achievement on the altar of — of all things! — territorial expansion.

A deal with the Palestinians, pushed forward by American muscle, was in Israel’s interest, I said. Without a two-state solution, guided by someone like Barack Obama, “Palestinians will outnumber us and will no longer consider 1967 a relevant date. The battle will be for all of Israel and they will win. Everyone will be yelling ‘Apartheid.’ Within two generations we’ll see the destruction of the Third Temple.”

Moreover, I noted, Bush, with his love of Zion, had been a disaster, inadvertently empowering Iran. Obama, with his cool detachment, was just what we needed.

Lastly, I encouraged her to vote Democrat, now, before her Alex P. Keaton-like eldest got the right to vote and cancelled her out. And she did (I think, maybe). She even wrote to me about the beauty of that cold January day in 2009 when he was sworn into office.

What a pity this stab-in-the-back could not possibly have been foreseen… even if I failed to note that his ritual genuflection to AIPAC was even less genuine than it appeared to be at the time.


After eight years of experiencing regular pain between the shoulder blades, conservatives can enjoy the prospect of the knife sticking out of liberal backs.