Category: Uncategorized

LeBron is going home

I don’t care about basketball, much less the NBA. But in a world of superpaid sports stars chasing championships and money and lower state income taxes, it’s almost mindblowing for a bona fide superstar in his prime to defy all the experts and announce that he’s going to return to Cleveland because it’s the place he calls home:

Before anyone ever cared where I would play basketball, I was a kid from Northeast Ohio. It’s where I walked. It’s where I ran. It’s where I cried. It’s where I bled. It holds a special place in my heart. People there have seen me grow up. I sometimes feel like I’m their son. Their passion can be overwhelming. But it drives me. I want to give them hope when I can. I want to inspire them when I can. My relationship with Northeast Ohio is bigger than basketball. I didn’t realize that four years ago. I do now.

Remember when I was sitting up there at the Boys & Girls Club in 2010? I was thinking, This is really tough. I could feel it. I was leaving something I had spent a long time creating. If I had to do it all over again, I’d obviously do things differently, but I’d still have left. Miami, for me, has been almost like college for other kids. These past four years helped raise me into who I am. I became a better player and a better man. I learned from a franchise that had been where I wanted to go. I will always think of Miami as my second home. Without the experiences I had there, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing today.

I went to Miami because of D-Wade and CB. We made sacrifices to keep UD. I loved becoming a big bro to Rio. I believed we could do something magical if we came together. And that’s exactly what we did! The hardest thing to leave is what I built with those guys. I’ve talked to some of them and will talk to others. Nothing will ever change what we accomplished. We are brothers for life.  I also want to thank Micky Arison and Pat Riley for giving me an amazing four years.

I’m doing this essay because I want an opportunity to explain myself uninterrupted. I don’t want anyone thinking: He and Erik Spoelstra didn’t get along. … He and Riles didn’t get along. … The Heat couldn’t put the right team together. That’s absolutely not true.

I’m not having a press conference or a party. After this, it’s time to get to work.

When I left Cleveland, I was on a mission. I was seeking championships, and we won two. But Miami already knew that feeling. Our city hasn’t had that feeling in a long, long, long time. My goal is still to win as many titles as possible, no question. But what’s most important for me is bringing one trophy back to Northeast Ohio.

I always believed that I’d return to Cleveland and finish my career there. I just didn’t know when. After the season, free agency wasn’t even a thought. But I have two boys and my wife, Savannah, is pregnant with a girl. I started thinking about what it would be like to raise my family in my hometown. I looked at other teams, but I wasn’t going to leave Miami for anywhere except Cleveland. The more time passed, the more it felt right. This is what makes me happy.

To make the move I needed the support of my wife and my mom, who can be very tough. The letter from Dan Gilbert, the booing of the Cleveland fans, the jerseys being burned — seeing all that was hard for them. My emotions were more mixed. It was easy to say, “OK, I don’t want to deal with these people ever again.” But then you think about the other side. What if I were a kid who looked up to an athlete, and that athlete made me want to do better in my own life, and then he left? How would I react? I’ve met with Dan, face-to-face, man-to-man. We’ve talked it out. Everybody makes mistakes. I’ve made mistakes as well. Who am I to hold a grudge?

I’m not promising a championship. I know how hard that is to deliver. We’re not ready right now. No way. Of course, I want to win next year, but I’m realistic. It will be a long process, much longer than it was in 2010. My patience will get tested. I know that. I’m going into a situation with a young team and a new coach. I will be the old head. But I get a thrill out of bringing a group together and helping them reach a place they didn’t know they could go. I see myself as a mentor now and I’m excited to lead some of these talented young guys. I think I can help Kyrie Irving become one of the best point guards in our league. I think I can help elevate Tristan Thompson and Dion Waiters. And I can’t wait to reunite with Anderson Varejao, one of my favorite teammates.

But this is not about the roster or the organization. I feel my calling here goes above basketball. I have a responsibility to lead, in more ways than one, and I take that very seriously. My presence can make a difference in Miami, but I think it can mean more where I’m from. I want kids in Northeast Ohio, like the hundreds of Akron third-graders I sponsor through my foundation, to realize that there’s no better place to grow up. Maybe some of them will come home after college and start a family or open a business. That would make me smile. Our community, which has struggled so much, needs all the talent it can get.

In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. Everything is earned. You work for what you have.

I’m ready to accept the challenge. I’m coming home.

It’s remarkable to see how James declines to hold a grudge against Dan Gilbert after the Cavaliers owner published a bitter, nasty open letter to him after he left Cleveland for Miami. This is the statement, and action, of a man who embraces responsibility and leadership. I won’t be surprised if there are more than a few people outside Northeast Ohio hoping that one day, LeBron James is able to present that one trophy to the place, and the people, he obviously loves.

Mailvox: DISCO SUCKS and the Evil League of Evil

I was less interested in the analogy drawn here than the important conclusion drawn by the emailer:

I mentioned that we were now in the “riot grrl” phase of SFF. Today, after reading the following link, I came to more conclusions:  1) The Evil League of Evil is the “Disco Sucks” of SFF, and 2) NEVER let your opponent have the opportunity to speak on your own behalf and not answer in kind:

“So how did racism and homophobia get attached to Disco Demolition?

In 1996, VH1 was attempting to expand from the music video template of MTV by creating documentaries and original programming. One of their first was “The Seventies,” a look at the decade in popular culture. A producer asked me to contribute a commentary about Disco Demolition. I saw the event as a romp, not of major cultural significance. I had no interest in claiming responsibility for killing disco. My target was Disco DAI, which was smothered in spring of 1980. The interview coincided with my quitting WMVP (a story for another day). I missed it.

Blowing off that interview was a mistake. The producers reframed the event through the lens of 1996 sensibilities. For the first time, the event was labeled racist and homophobic. It was a cheap shot, made without exploration, and it served as a pivot point for their documentary. It has lived on, thanks to Google….We were a bunch of disenfranchised 20-something rockers having some laughs at the expense of older brothers who had the capital and the clothing to hang with the trendy social elite. We were letting off a little steam. Any statement to the contrary is just plain wrong.”

I remember the VH1 documentary he’s writing about, and I remember the saddened, wistful, “knowing” looks of the disco artists bemoaning the “Disco Demolition” and the “Disco sucks” movement in general, and yes, I specifically remember the charges of racism and homosexual backlash they labeled it with, completely unchallenged.  I even remember a cutscene of Tom Petty smashing the shit out of a drum machine around 1979 or so.  Funny how no one ever accuses HIM of being racist or homophobic.

My parents both grew up in Philadelphia in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.  That means American Band Stand when it was still broadcast in Philly, there were such things as “regional sounds” regional hits and scenes, records you might NEVER hear again if you ventured 2 or 3 hours away.  In the ’70s, they were into disco (they married in ’75, I came along in ’77).  Everybody was into disco, for the simple reason, it was fun and it was a party scene, especially for guidos growing up in Northeastern cities.

My parent’s reaction to the “Disco Sucks” thing?  Well, they thought it was a little mean spirited, at worst, and maybe, maybe, there was an element of anti-black or anti-gay bias in it, but they were the first to admit that by 1979 it was pretty much over.  They didn’t attach too much cultural significance to disco itself, It was a fad, and like all fads, it was time to move on to the next one.  Incidentally 1979 is about the time they both jumped off the pop culture wagon – they didn’t care for punk or New Wave, and I think, other than oldies collections, the last NEW record my Dad bought was Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall.”  As time went on, they went further back into soul, R&B, doo wop, and classic rock. 

They were more Philly Soul and Motown fans than anything else, so they also readily admitting to realizing just how limiting a musical form disco was.  Sure there are some tremendous records, but if you wanted something that was actually PLAYED by musicians, you were looking for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and Chic, NOT the very first names that come to mind when someone says “Disco.”  I mean, Kiss went disco, Blondie went disco, Star Wars went disco.  It was simply,  played,  out.  It did NOT speak to rock fans.  There was only so much you could do with “four on the floor” and “burn baby burn.”

Funny though, the VH1 “rockumentary” made ZERO mention about the 9 million pound asteroid in the room:  did disco, in fact, SUCK?  No one of course would actually go near the idea that maybe, just maybe the music wasn’t really all that good – now it’s looked at as kitsch, nostalgia fodder.

The interviewees they had, that I remember, included Donna Summer and Nile Rodgers of Chic – that’s bringing in the ringers – that is a convenient way of saying “you can’t say it sucked!!!”  They sure as hell didn’t interview the Bee Gees, or Abba, or Tavares.  No one actually did much criticizing of the obvious, the central point, the music, other than to say a little “yeah maybe it was a bit manufactured and faddish, I mean, c’mon, Kiss” but YOU’RE ALL REYCISSS!!!!!  It’s like how you simply CANNOT criticize Pink SFf for its actuall literary merits or lack thereof – the SKILL of the writer – all that’s important is the feels and  the politics, it doesn’t matter if it’s actually good or not.  It’s art as participation trophy for the oppressed, and this documentary, I think, KICKSTARTED that idea into the stratosphere.

But, here’s the point, the original instigator, Steve Dahl, passed on a chance to have his say in court.  Would it have made a difference? I don’t know.  And I also don’t know why he waited until now to make his point, but the fact is this, this rock-hard meme that’s it going to be damn near impossible to ever refute is stuck in the popular consciousness, just about the time when PC bullshit and the war on language really took off, the 1990s.

So, why say that ELoE is the “disco sucks” movement of SFF?  Because you’re the only ones calling out Pink SFF on its overuse of drum machines, recycled beats, empty lyrics, and celebration of shallow excess – Pink SFF happens to be the current ever-declining sales posting radio friendly unit shifters of the moment, but you’re basically saying that what came along with “New Wave” sci-fi in the ’60s and ’70s, which was pretty damn disco sci-fi if you ask me (Jerry Cornelius anyone?), also begat cynical punk rock (cyberpunk), industrial (gray goo), and other fads that have had their time, and are fading. You could call some of Pink SFF “hip hop” but unlike real-life hip hop, it also doesn’t sell, and I think that’s more apparent in comics and graphic novels and movies than books. 

He’s correct. The pinkshirts are DESPERATE to avoid the discussion that the Evil League of Evil has collectively initiated about science fiction and fantasy, and they are constantly trying to summarize and explain and interpret and spin what we are saying rather than simply quoting us. In many cases, they don’t even refer directly to us by name, but instead provide in-group indicators so that their fellow pinkshirts will know to whom they are referring and bark on request while moderates and neutrals more capable of being swayed will be left in the dark.

They are attempting to control the narrative rather than engage in discourse, for the obvious reason that they know as well as we do that we are absolutely correct. They claim we are bad writers while readily admitting to never having read our books. We claim they are inept storytellers pushing left-wing propaganda on the basis of being intimately familiar with the very best they have to offer. Hence we can identify them, quote them at length, and directly engage because we have nothing to hide and nothing to fear. They, on the contrary, are correctly fearful of being exposed, at having their whole Potemkin Village of publishers and editors and writers and reviews and “bestseller” lists and awards blown away in the harsh, judgmental winds of reality.

So, they will attempt to continue controlling the narrative by speaking on our behalf and erecting the sort of strawmen they are capable of defeating. But, thanks to the Internet and our own determination to speak for ourselves, they will not succeed.

The slippery slope is not a logical fallacy

To the contrary, the slippery slope is observably a predictive model with occasional success, particularly with regards to sexual matters:

Judge Garry Neilson, from the district court in the state of New South Wales, likened incest to homosexuality, which was once regarded as criminal and “unnatural” but is now widely accepted.

He said incest was now only a crime because it may lead to abnormalities in offspring but this rationale was increasingly irrelevant because of the availability of contraception and abortion.

“A jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now ‘available’, not having [a] sexual partner,” the judge said.

“If this was the 1950s and you had a jury of 12 men there, which is what you’d invariably have, they would say it’s unnatural for a man to be interested in another man or a man being interested in a boy. Those things have gone….

“The complainant has been sexually awoken, shall we say, by having two relationships with men and she had become ‘free’ when the second relationship broke down. The only thing that might change that is the fact that they were a brother and sister but we’ve come a long way from the 1950s – when the position of the English Common Law was that sex outside marriage was not lawful.”

This should make it clear to everyone who is not a sexual deviant that the position of the English Common Law was correct, and that all of the various deviancies that have been legalized and normalized and declared no longer indicative of psychological sickness since the 1950s should promptly be returned to their former status.

There is no middle ground. What devotees of one particular immorality or another believe is a reasonable stopping point – here, and no further –  is nothing more than a waystation on the road to total depravity of the worst imaginable sort.

We libertarians were wrong. Societal liberty simply cannot be maximized through sexual anarchy any more than it can be maximized though unrestricted immigration, unrestricted government, or unrestricted voting. In retrospect, this should always have been obvious: if everything goes, then literally everything will go. This is no longer a hypothetical objection on the part of traditional conservatives, it is an undeniable reality. It is human nature to push at the boundaries; there will always be those who cross the line. Therefore, the line needs to be set firmly along boundaries that are undeniably eucivic and proven by centuries of tradition to be sustainable in the long term.

There will be those who disingenuously insist that the clock cannot be turned back, that humanity is doomed to an endless future of sodomy, incest, rape, necrophilia, and bestiality. This is provably false; the current period of sexual anarchy in the West is hardly the first in human history and it is very short by historical standards. And this particular clock most certainly will be turned back, one way or another, because everything from birth rates to the transmission rates of sexually transmitted diseases indicate that the current state of near-sexual anarchy has already reached the point of unsustainability.

Technology can never trump Creator-imposed morality any more than science can surmount the physical laws of Nature. It may appear to do so, for a short time, but that is nothing more than an illusion based on incomplete understanding.

Chiraq: America’s war zone

Whatever could be the problem in Chicago? It’s probably poverty. Or hunger. Or income inequality. Or privilege. Or maybe global climate change.

For 10 minutes, it seemed like the shooting was everywhere in the South Chicago neighborhood. It started when someone shot and wounded a couple, then two people fired at the shooter, then there was a chase and shots exchanged and a man sitting on a porch was hit. Responding officers kept cutting each other off on their radios as they reported other gunfire in the area late Sunday night and early Monday morning.

Then the heavy equipment rolled in: A helicopter and SUVs packed with lockers of rifles. SWAT teams in green coveralls patrolled the streets with uniformed officers.

It was just one of dozens of shooting scenes across Chicago over the long Fourth of July weekend. In all, at least 82 people were shot, 14 of them fatally, since Thursday afternoon when two woman were shot as they sat outside a two-flat within a block of Garfield Park.

Five of the people were shot by police over 36 hours on Friday and Saturday, including two boys 14 and 16 who were killed when they allegedly refused to drop their guns.

Many of the long weekend’s shootings were on the South Side, clustered in the Englewood, Roseland, Gresham and West Pullman neighborhoods that rank among the most violent in the city.

The victims ranged from the 14-year-boy shot by police in the Old Irving Park neighborhood to a 66-year-old woman grazed in the head as she walked up the steps of her porch on the Far South Side.  Most victims were in their late teens and 20s.

Fortunately, there is an answer, and that is the MILITARY OCCUPATION of Chicago.

National Guard needed in city to stem shootings

It is time to call out the National Guard to patrol the streets of certain crime-infested neighborhoods in Chicago where the murder rate is high. It is apparent that the presence of the city’s police force alone is inadequate to deal with this violence.

I suggest that the National Guard be mobilized during every weekend for the rest of the summer.  I also suggest imposing a curfew of midnight on weekend nights during the summer on all teenagers in the city except for those with jobs that require them to be out after the curfew.

It is, of course, deplorably racist to express any wish to avoid living among people who cannot be described as being even a little bit savage and merely require a modest military occupation in order to reduce the amount of murderous violence in which they happen to engage for no particular reason at all. All right-thinking people would cheerfully welcome the chance to have their neighborhood occupied by the US military, as that is a very small price to pay for the myriad benefits of diversity.

Is race the most valuable resource?

The Chateau considers the question:

After Randall Parker gazed in the crystal ball and saw chaos and decay in America’s near future, commenter “Jim” contributed a sound bite worthy of the coveted CH Freelance COTW.

Places like Brazil and the Congo have enormous economic potential just based on geography, climate, and natural resources. A place like Japan is mountainous (only 3% of the land area is arable), few natural resources, not located near major trade routes, subject to frequent catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis. But Japan has the Japanese people who are more valuable than all of Brazil’s natural wealth.

Doesn’t that get right to the beating heart of all our loud, violent, useless social discourse?

whatever happens, japan has got
the japanese, and you have not

Those who look at today’s birth rates and leap to erroneous conclusions are forgetting that the future does not proceed from the present in a linear manner. Nigeria may have far more Nigerians than in 1950, but it is less able to feed itself than it was in 1950. On the other hand, while there is a lower percentage of young Japanese than there were before, in quantitative terms, there are more young Japanese than there were in 1914.

The one thing we know for certain about the future is that it will not look like today.

For varying degrees of “fascist”

In which Our Friend Damien proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that he doesn’t know what “fascist” means. But certainly we would be remiss if we did not help him complete his list. And, for the purposes of improving the obvious gaps in his education, recommend that he read I Fascisti by Giordano Bruno Guerri and Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. At the very least, he would do well to read my translation of “Il manifesto dei fasci di combattimento”, penned by Mussolini himself, to better understand who is, and who is not, fascistic, paying particular attention to the very first plank of the program.

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
I might do a column on sci-fis most crazy, fascist authors. Nominations?

Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert
@damiengwalter You really need some? I thought your “fan club” provided sufficient ammunition.

Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
@CoraBuhlert May be one or two I’ve missed…

Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert
@damiengwalter Kratman, Wright, VD, Correia, the entire Mad Genius Club, prepper fic authors, anybody in that Buzzfeed article.

Paul Weimer ‏@PrinceJvstin
@CoraBuhlert @damiengwalter that’s a fairly solidly comprehensive list

Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert
@damiengwalter Ringo, though he’s not a jerk as far as I know.

 Damien Walter ‏@damiengwalter
@CoraBuhlert I think the Oh No John Ringo meme suggests he is.

Cora Buhlert ‏@CoraBuhlert
@damiengwalter Not as jerky as the others who will flood you with trolls.

The amusing thing is that Damien has been repeatedly writing about Larry Correia and me in The Guardian, he just normally pretends to be writing about some mysterious Voldemortean figures Who Shall Not Be Named, whose secret identities only the PC cognoscenti may be permitted to know. But a point-and-shriek routine isn’t very effective when one only shrieks and refuses to actually point at anyone. So, for all that the charge of fascism is risibly inaccurate, it would arguably be a step forward.

Perhaps one day Damien will even reach the point where he feels comfortable doing the journalistically responsible thing and actually ask a question or two of his targets instead of repeatedly engaging in the conventional left-wing spin cycle into which no genuine information is permitted to penetrate.

In any event, who is Damien missing? He appears to have most of the Evil League of Evil already covered. Except M-Zed, of course, who will be mortally wounded at being overlooked.

Argentina v Holland

After last night’s Brazilian meltdown, I can’t imagine either of these teams are feeling great about their chances against the Teutonic steamroller. But someone has to play the role of the sacrificial lamb, and after all, it is an honor to simply be nominated as a World Cup finalist.

Holland is the glaringly obvious choice, in light of the fact that Argentina will be missing Di Maria, its second most-effective player of this World Cup. But Argentina has the second coming of the little magician on its side in the grand tradition of Diego Maradona, so it is simply not possible to count out la Albiceleste.

The Oranje have no Dennis Bergkamp to save them now from the magic of Messi. Look for Argentina to uphold the tattered honor of CONMEBOL!

EXTRA TIME: Neither team can manage to get past the back four and everyone is afraid to shoot in the box.

Thought policing isn’t good business

Anthony Cumia correctly identifies a violent savage as a savage and gets fired, because it is supposed to be bad for business to permit its employees any freedom of speech, even on their off-hours. Except the corporate cure appears to be considerably worse than the disease:

Opie is devastated, Anthony is unrepentant, and their fans are livid and seeking revenge.

“Stop firing people for being themselves,” demanded one loyal listener of SiriusXM radio’s transgressive, occasionally tasteless Opie & Anthony Show, after shock jock Anthony Cumia was summarily terminated for a series of tweets—first reported last Wednesday by Gawker—that SiriusXM described as “racially-charged,” “hate-filled,” and “abhorrent.”

“Fascist bloggers don’t get to tell me what I can listen to,” wrote another diehard O&A fan, posting his comment on the web site for a petition to “Reinstate Anthony Cumia.”

“FUCK Sirius XM!” was a typical posting on “Boycott Sirius for Anthony Cumia’s Firing,” a Facebook page claiming 65,000 supporters, adding that “the army is growing.”

Even A-list comedian and frequent O&A guest Colin Quinn weighed in, tweeting sympathetically at Cumia: “I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death my right to stop u saying it (Voltaire if he worked for gawker).” Show regulars Jay Mohr and Penn Gillette also cheered for Cumia. 

So goes Day Six of this strange radio morality play, combining elements of racial resentment and freedom of expression, that began the night of July 2, when Cumia claims he was snapping pictures in Times Square and a young African American woman objected to being photographed by punching him repeatedly in the face. An enraged Cumia vented obscenely on Twitter—the digital equivalent of white-on-black crime in retribution for an alleged physical assault.

Since then, rage and confusion have dominated the discussion, though not to the exclusion of some surprisingly thoughtful analysis from O&A fans who say they are drawn to the show because it is unfiltered, honest, funny and devoid of political correctness.

 “I follow him for his comedy, not for his opinions,” said Scott VanDusen, 30, who plans to cancel his SiriusXM subscription if Cumia is not reinstated by week’s end, and described himself as a Libertarian and the owner of software company in Wisconsin….

An additional planned boycott of the satellite and online radio
company’s advertising sponsors—which include such brands as McDonalds,
Geico, General Motors, ExxonMobil and American Express—is hardly good
news for SiriusXM’s stockholders, who have watched the share price on
NASDAQ drop nearly 2 percent since Cumia’s firing was announced on
Friday.

Imagine that…. It would certainly be informative to see a comprehensive list of the various people that Opie and Anthony have insulted and disrespected over the years without Sirius taking any exception. Apparently protection must be provided at all times to shield the poor tender feelings of an innocent, childlike people who cannot be held responsible for their actions or be expected to survive the sort of direct criticism that is regularly meted out to adults.

The obvious and inherent racism of the self-appointed anti-racist thought police never ceases to amaze me. And they will never win, because people have eyes and because die Gedanken sind immer frei.

Darwin + Title IX = IDIOCRACY

I long suspected that there would be seriously negative ramifications to encouraging our best and brightest women to remain barren and pursue degrees instead of preparing them for motherhood, but I didn’t expect the effect to be quantified so soon. There is more detail at Alpha Game, but suffice it to say that it has been confirmed that education, and the education of women in particular, is literally dysgenic.

We already knew that female suffrage and higher education for women was dyscivic. But this is the first confirmation of the logical conclusion that they are dysgenic as well. The silver lining is that it is a societal problem that will eventually solve itself over time… assuming the society somehow manages to survive.

I see this as yet another indication that there is no such thing as linear progress, much less inevitable progress, and that human societies follow a cyclical pattern of eucivic structures arising from savagery that are gradually supplanted by dyscivic ones that cause the civilized society to collapse again into barbarism.

On literary propaganda and sucker punches

John C. Wright considers the questions of literature as propaganda in “Writing with an Axe to Grind”:

A propagandist, like an attorney loyal only to his client, will argue his client’s case, and does not bring up any points helpful to the opposition. An artist, if he is honestly presenting an image of the world as it is or as it should be, will give both sides of the argument, because in nature there are two sides to each question, if not more. An artist may be indeed quite loyal to his burning vision of the world, but an attorney is a partisan loyal to a cause, not to a vision.

The attorney is trying to get a result, that is, to persuade a jury; whereas the poet is trying capture a in a web of words a reality somehow more real than reality itself, as strange as Norse gods catching Fenrir in a gossamer strand make of nine impossible things.

A propagandist is even less honest: he does not actually argue the case nor even tell the jurors that there are two sides to the case. He uses rhetoric rather than logic, uses appeals to emotion and uses other fundamentally indirect and dishonest tactics. The perfect propagandist changes his victim’s mind without the victim even being aware of the operation.

Contrariwise, philosophy confronts a judge with two opposite view points and calls on his to use his dispassionate reasoning to render a verdict.  Propaganda is the mere opposite of this. Propaganda lulls rather than awakens the judgment….

There are two dimensions of propaganda to keep in mind. One is the depth of the message being preached, and the other is the frequency.

To measure the depth, use the following rule of thumb: if the message were removed, would the rest of the story still stand? For example, in STARSHIP TROOPERS the answer is clearly a resounding No. It is not a war story. The fighting scenes are few and far between and sketchy to the point of zenlike reductionism. It is a story about the pragmatic morality of fighting, the patriotic duty to fight. Remove the speeches and everything in the tale uses to buttress or exemplify the points made in the speeches, and the entire story is gone.

Again, try to imagine ATLAS SHRUGGED without the struggle between the productive and archrational supermen and the vampiric irrational socialists, and there is no story. I suppose there is sort of a harsh and angular love story between Dagny and Reardon, but since the ultimate resolution of that plotline is forced by the author’s peculiar theories of the metaphysical foundations of love and romance, even that would have to be dropped.

Likewise again, while parts of THE GOLDEN COMPASS or THE SUBTLE KNIFE might be preserved without the anticlerical message, there is no story in AMBER SPYGLASS aside from the struggle between the good freethinking atheists and the Evil Church of Evil and their clownlike god who evaporates upon exposure to air.

Frequency is another thing. It is common enough in movies and books to hide a Leftwing ‘sucker punch’ beneath what otherwise seems and innocent story, or whip out an anti-Bush joke in the third act that has nothing to do with the story, or suddenly make an old wizard or a comedy relief viking a sodomite, in order to make the homosexual disorder seems harmless and unremarkable. These are called sucker punches because they are the opposite of deep propaganda: their whole effect comes from them being unexpected to the point of being extraneous.

So imagine listening to a comedian telling ninety nine jokes about his mother in law, and one remark that is not a joke at all to the effect that everyone who regards homosexual acts as sinful, or even imprudent, is a hateful bigot with no right to a polite hearing: and Christ was evil for preaching sexual purity, and the Antichrist is Our Master.

In this case, the ninety nine jokes was nothing more than the patter of a confidence trickster, a con job to get you to lower your guard, to lull your suspicions, so he could punch you while you were nodding, you sucker.

This is an interesting perspective and it further demonstrates the difference between Pink and Blue SF. While there is, without question, propaganda being written on both sides, one of the hallmarks of Pink SF/F is the observable fact that in most cases, the personal is the political and the propaganda is the story.

Remove the Christian propaganda from Narnia and you still have an astonishingly compelling set of fantasy stories. Remove the feminist propaganda from the average Pink SF/F novel and you’ve got nothing but a bog standard romance novel.

Wright’s latest work, CITY BEYOND TIME, could technically be labeled a brief, except for the fact that it is so masterfully presented, so deeply philosophical, and so perfectly woven into the story that very few will be aware of the book on that level. It is not, however, propaganda.

Stross’s THE RHESUS CHART, on the other hand, is neither a brief nor propaganda by Wright’s definition, as the expected anti-Christian asides fall squarely into Exception (1): “a part of the author’s world view integral to him”. By a happy coincidence (or was it prescience), I bookmarked a few passages last week that nicely demonstrate this.

  1. “As non sequiturs go Pete has heard worse. In parish work you periodically have to deal with young, slightly alienated gay teens whose overly concerned parents drag them in for a talking-to by the vicar—there’s something strange about Harry. Part of Pete’s job (as he sees it) is to talk them down from the ramparts of militant anti-Christianism, explain that no, the entire Church does not hate them, and then point them at the nearest LGBT youth counseling service. With luck, in a few years’ time they’ll be happy and stable, and remember you when the last of the reactionary ’phobes have finally flounced out of the General Synod.”
  2.  “Oh good god.” Mo doesn’t believe in any gods other than the ones I believe in, but the expostulation comes instinctively.
  3.  “Oh, that’s easy!” He looks up. “Would you believe that, of forty-six parishioners informally polled, thirty-six of them believe in the existence of evil incarnate, in the person of the Devil?” He sighs. “Well, their average age was somewhere north of sixty, and they’re self-selected for being frequent attendees at religious services, so there was bound to be an element of literal-mindedness to them. But, taking the Devil as a baseline, the really interesting thing is that forty of them believe in vampires. Over 85 percent! Vampires are out-polling Satan in the bogeyman charts this decade.” He takes a mouthful of fizz. “Mind you, I added a couple of control questions. I said they were a self-selected sample? 52 percent of them think gays are going to hell, and 39 percent think the Earth was created late one Saturday night in October of 4004 BC.” He looks pained. “I can see I have some sermons to write on the subject of metaphor and creation myths. And tolerance.”

In fairness, these little jabs can’t really be described as sucker punches when they are telegraphed so obviously. But however ineptly they are administered, their intent is clearly to inform (unnecessarily as it happens) the reader of Mr. Stross’s worldview (to the extent it can be described as a coherent and singular entity as opposed to a dynamic collection of externally imposed politically correct opinions) rather than “manipulate the reader into adherence to an ideology”.

One of the interesting things THE RHESUS CHART caused me to reflect upon was the way atheists writing vampire novels resolutely stick to certain conventional aspects of the vampire myth, such as being undead, blood-drinking, superhuman strength, quasi-immortality, and a vulnerability to silver, stakes, and beheading, while just happening to remove the power of the Cross over vampires. I think this may reflect an element of anti-Christian propaganda, as well as a certain moral confusion about the intrinsically evil nature of the monsters.

And it shows how these biases can structurally weaken a story. Because, quite often, the very writer who has removed the power of the Cross (to say nothing of the Name of Jesus Christ) over the monsters subsequently decides that it would be very useful if there was a centuries-old organization that either knows about the monsters or hunts them, and then promptly attempts to introduce some element of the Catholic Church despite the fact that the Church has no more ability to deal with them than any Fortune 500 corporation.