Category: Uncategorized

The consequences of an atheist morality

John C. Wright has entirely too much fun deconstructing what passes for the logic of an altruism-based morality of the sort advocated by midwitted atheists who genuinely believe Richard Dawkins is a formidable philosopher:

Now, the most common and most persuasive argument an atheist or materialist can make in favor of universal morality is a genetic argument. The argument is that, as a matter of pure game theory, any races and breeds that develops a gene which imposes an instinct for altruism toward other members of one’s own bloodline, will, as a matter of course, have a definite statistical advantage in the lottery of Darwinian survival, and will come to outnumber those races and breeds that do not.

The argument is that the purely blind and selfish drive of the genes we carry in us therefore mesmerizes us with an instinct to altruism and self-sacrifice which is not in our immediate self-interest, but unintentionally serves the self-interest of the family, clan, tribe, breed, bloodline, and race.

The argument is that this mesmeric spell makes us hallucinate that there is such a thing as a moral code we are bound to obey, but whether this hallucination is true or false, it serves the blind and selfish reasons of the parasites called genes dwelling inside us, whom we much, willy-nilly, serve and obey.

Putting this argument to the test, I asked a hypothetical question about the following rule of behavior:  “Abducting Nubile Young Woman to Serve as Concubines, Dancing Girls, or Breeding Stock is bad.” Is this a rule that bind only those who share the non-abduction gene, or does it bind all men, including those with not one gene in common with us? I used the hypothetical example of an abductor who is a Man from Mars. He is not of our tribe, nation, or race. He is, at least during the Obama Administration NASA days, beyond the reach of any reasonable expectation of retaliation from Earthlings.

Is it objectively wrong for the Martian Warlord to abduct a luscious Earthgirl like Yvonne Craig to his horrible harem of terror atop Olympus Mons? Or is it only wrong because the Selfish Gene says it is wrong? Is it wrong objectively, or only genetically?

(Of course I mean to use this as an excuse to post more pictures!)

The genetic argument as a basis of morality makes me laugh until I puke green foam from my nose. It is obvious enough that if my instinct for altruism is proportional to how many selfish genes I have in common with another, that I will always prefer my self over my brother, my brother over my cousin, my cousin over my second cousin, my family over my clan, and my clan over my race, and my race over the Slavs and Jews and Untermenschen.

Racism, and I mean REAL Nazi-style kill-the-Jews racism, is not only excused by the genetic argument for altruism, it is demanded by it. Aiding anyone outside your clad and clan and bloodline is treason to the Selfish Gene, ergo, by this logic, immoral.

For that matter, women’s liberation causes a drop in fertility rates, so it also is treason against the Selfish Gene. for that matter, monogamy is treason, polygamy is demanded, and the consent of the concubines in the breeding harem is not required, because the gene does not care if you wanted to have happy children, only many children.

So, logically, if altruism is basic on the Selfish Gene, abducting dancing girls and nubile starlets to the breeding harem is not only licit, it is the highest and most saintly and most moral of all possible actions!

It may not be coincidental that this “morality” is most often advocated by the sort of male atheist whose only chance of any sexual exposure to dancing girls and nubile starlets would be through forcible abduction and rape.

It should be apparent that if we were to seriously adopt this sort of biology-based “morality” on a large scale, our world would more closely resemble John Norman’s Gor than anything else. The first imperative for any human society that values stability, let alone survival, is to eliminate unrestricted female volition in sexual matters. That is why religions and governments have always concerned themselves with a multitude of rules restricting it in some manner. Because without them, the civilized society will not survive.

As Camille Paglia pointed out repeatedly in Sexual Personae, the female represents the chaotic and unreasoning aspect of humanity, vital for the survival of the species, fertile when husbanded, and insanely destructive when left unrestrained.

Nicholas Kristof and the Butterfield Effect

Michael Graham defines the Butterfield Effect:

It’s what happens when someone on the Left makes a statement that is laughably ludicrous on its face, yet it reveals what the speaker truly believes — no matter how dumb.

“The Butterfield Effect” is named in honor of ace New York Times crime reporter Fox Butterfield, the intrepid analyst responsible for such brilliantly headlined stories as “More Inmates, Despite Drop In Crime,” and “Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction,” not to mention the poetic 1997 header, “Crime Keeps on Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.”

Mr. Butterfield is truly perplexed at what he calls the “paradox” of more criminals in prison coinciding with less crime in neighborhoods. An observation that might appear obvious to an 8th grader (crooks + jail = fewer crimes) is simply beyond his grasp. Butterfield of the Times is the poster boy for the greatest conundrum facing the American Left today: How do you explain to people who just don’t get it that the problem is they just don’t get it?

 Nicholas Kristof is my favorite exemplar of this effect. Previously there was his brilliant idea to combat Boko Haram with redoubled efforts to educate Nigerian girls. And look at his column today, in which he affects to be puzzled why Aung San Suu Kyi isn’t standing up for the rights of Myanmar’s Muslims to set up madrassas all over the country and indiscriminately murder Buddhists.

  1. Aung San Suu Kyi should be one of the heroes of modern times. Instead, as her country imposes on the Rohingya Muslim minority an apartheid that would have made white supremacists in South Africa blush, she bites her tongue. It seems as though she aspires to become president of Myanmar, and speaking up for a reviled minority could be fatal to her prospects.
  2. In the absence of schools, Wahhabi madrassas are popping up ominously in closed camps.
  3. “She supports Muslims,” U Pan Tha, a 66-year-old Buddhist, told me,
    bitterly. His home was burned by Muslims in 2012 clashes, and he now
    lives in a camp for displaced people. He voted for Aung San Suu Kyi’s
    party in 1990, but he says he won’t in the elections next year. “We will
    choose the military government over Suu Kyi,” he said.

It’s an apt reference to South Africa; it would appear Suu Kyi has learned from de Klerk’s mistakes. Kristof doesn’t seem to realize that once there are enough Muslims in the USA, history suggests they will begin behaving the same way they do in Myanmar, in India, in the Philippines, in China, in the former Soviet Union, and in the Middle East. After a few schools or churches or synagogues are attacked, what the American people’s response will likely make Myanmar’s patient strangulation of the Rohingya look moderate in comparison.

There will be a second and larger scale Reconquista across the West sooner or later. It’s that or Sharia. The sooner it takes place, the less violent it will be.

Three Hugo reviews

Technically four, actually. Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog is reviewing this year’s Hugo nominees. He’s reviewed three in the novelette category so far, one of them being the Puppinette’s The Lady Astronaut of Mars:

The story begins with the confused ramblings of an elderly woman. We
know there’s something about Mars and Kansas… but we’re left collating
hints and scraps of information given to us by what is possibly an
unreliable narrator. If this actually is serious science fiction… then
it must be some sort of alternate history because we are shown some kind
Mars Mission from the fifties that was engineered with punch card
programs. And yet, the doctor from Kansas is named Dorothy and has an
Aunt Em and Uncle Henry… and this is so outrageous I can’t tell if this
is satire or a some kind of a joke.

If you keep reading, you soon discover that it isn’t some kind of drug addled hallucination. There is
a bit of science folded into the story: a domed colony on mars, an
asteroid impact on earth, an inhabitable extrasolar planet…. It’s not a
bad little premise there, really… but it is entirely smothered in the
details of particularly uninspiring elderly couple. The images and
situations are as far from those depicted in Frank Frazetta covers as
can possibly get. Instead Dejah Thoris, you get a sixty year old woman’s
flabby arms. Instead of gruesome sword fights and pulse pounding
action… you have a couple of bureaucrats coaxing a former astronaut to
come out of retirement.

The tone of the work is very even… almost elevated. It’s hard not to
read it in the cadence of an open mic slam poetry routine. Sometime like
this could be on NPR– it seems to hit all the right notes with a bit of
panache– but the story ends up grinding on into more and more graphic
and disheartening details.

He has also reviewed Brad Torgersen’s Lights in the Deep, which includes not one, but TWO Hugo-nominated works:

I remember the last couple of stories I’d
read in magazines like that. Back in the early nineties, I dipped into
several of them hoping to find the next Robert A. Heinlein. One story
was about a scientist running experiments on computer simulations of
pigs and chickens or something. If they passed, he might get to test his
drugs on a computer model of a human! (No aliens or explosions there.
Heck, I can’t even remember any conflict.) In another story, a painter
that specializes in portraits always ends up romancing the women he
paints. He’s a real Lothario. Then he gets a gig to paint an alien on
Mars or something… and his work just isn’t coming out right. Then it
dawns on him that he needs to get freaky with the alien in order paint a
good picture of it. Twist ending: the alien with incomprehensible
anatomy turns out to be a dude!

Perhaps  somebody else can confirm this for
me, but maybe the magazines have continued to be as godawful as I
remember. (I’m afraid to check, honestly. What if they’re worse…?)
Maybe “real” science fiction with aliens and space ships and laser
beams and exploding planets just isn’t done so much anymore…? Maybe the
fans that are deep in the science fiction scene are actually starving
for the sort of thing that I would recognize as, you know… being science
fiction. Maybe the way that Brad Torgersen’s collection combines
apocalyptic catastrophe with a sense of hopefulness really is having an
impact.
That he does this while straining to meet
editorial expectations and bending over backwards to not offend the
readership’s political and religious sensibilities is perhaps the most
obvious constraint holding back these stories. 

 He also reviewed The Last Witchking:

There’s nothing like a good pogrom, fatwā, book banning, congressional committee, or concerned citizens group to pique my interest in something. The greater the moral panic, the better the advertising. It was inevitable the hand-wringing surrounding the Hugo nominations this year would be just enough to get me to see what the fuss is about. I dove in to a book by the infamous Vox Day just hoping to be scandalized. (It’s the least I can do after growing up in the shadow of B.A.D.D. and the PMRC.)

I almost didn’t finish it. The first few pages consisted of two star-crossed lovers saying their last goodbyes to one another. I just about gave up right there, but the depiction of elves shortly after that held my attention. They weren’t the stereotypical tree-hugging types, but had a bit of an edge to them. Before long I was caring about the main character and clicking the page down key. My eyeballs were glued to the monitor and I couldn’t stop reading. (I’d picked up the Kindle edition that was free the other day because of the third story’s controversial Hugo nomination.)

Now, I’ve been hooked on page turners before that ended up making me feeling disappointed afterwards. You might know you’ve been had, but you keep buying books in the series because you have to know how it ends. This wasn’t like that. The main characters here are all so different from each other: an evil witchking, a goblin warrior, and elvish “seeker.” What’s intriguing to me is the extent to which I became immersed in the perspectives of each one. I really want to see each one to succeed… even when I maybe shouldn’t such as in the case of the titular character…. I’m glad for this brouhaha over the Hugo nominations, because this
book would have never crossed my radar otherwise. It was well worth the
few hours it took to read it, but I’m skeptical of the idea that a book
set in this world could go toe to toe with George R. R. Martin’s epic
fantasy series.

I don’t know Jeffro and he’s clearly not a reader of this blog, but I find it telling that his perspective as a genuine science fiction fan is so vastly different from that of the self-appointed “fan writers” who have been loudly pronouncing the intrinsic terribleness of my nominated work. Now that the Hugo packet has been made available to the voters, it should be fascinating to learn how many of them share his perception of these works in comparison to the usual suspects. It will certainly be more than a little amusing to hear the shrieks and the popping sound of five hundred heads exploding like Red Viper skulls if there turn out to be more Jeffros than Damiens among the voters.

In any event, I sent him a copy of A THRONE OF BONES to review, so that he could see for himself how well, or how poorly, it goes toe-to-toe with Mr. Martin’s ever-expanding trilogy.

UPDATE: Since some of you apparently weren’t aware, the Hugo Voter’s Packet is now available from LonCon and can be downloaded here by registered voters.

Book Eight

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

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

The challenge of cause-and-effect

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feminism is for psychos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Retire, you selfish old bitch!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One more blogger wanted

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

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

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

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

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

The tedious fruit of nihilism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another whack of the Tetsubo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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