Meme of the Week

As it turns out, the weekly vote has reliably lined up with the more objective measure of Twitter impressions. DACA Families was the weekly winner, with 32,631 impressions. The least popular was Hotel Catalonia, with only 11,316.

To become a #DailyMemeWarrior and receive the Meme of the Day in your email every weekday morning, sign up here. I have a feeling that tomorrow’s Meme of the Day is going to exceed 50k impressions, quite possibly 100k. This is not it. But it’s good to know the NFL is embracing the fullness of free speech at its games.

And keep this in mind when you consider their mutual responses to President Trump.

SportsCenter‏ @SportsCenter
Roger Goodell and DeMaurice Smith spent part of Saturday discussing how to best handle President Trump’s statements.

Apparently they should have spent more of it. And then kept their mouths shut.

UPDATE: This is an interesting rumor floating around the chans from a purported NFL employee.

Some NFL teams have been looking into firing players who are pulling this protest shit. But their lawyers have all told them, while they can do it, the fired players could then take them to court and win. The 49ers were among these teams, who have consulted their lawyers; hence why CK never got fired. Their lawyers told them it was cheaper to just let him do his bullshit.

Goodell knows he has fucked up big time, but can’t do anything except tacitly let the teams blacklist players who pull this shit. Goodell and most of the coaches know that the players throwing these tantrums have them by the balls.

I think they’re about to find out that not firing them will prove to be considerably more expensive.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin discusses the NFL situation.

We’re seeing drops in attendance.  We’re seeing drops everywhere, in advertising as well and that’s because there’s no business enterprise that is ever going to survive by insulting and trashing its own customer base…

Based on recent events, it would appear far fewer people understand this basic fact of business than you might imagine.

Ideas must be sold

The Z-man observes that too many ideologues resist accepting the fact that their ideas have to be sold rather than simply accepted as holy writ from on high:

Good salesmen never lose sight of reality. That’s the problem with outsider political movements. They allow themselves to be trapped in narrow ideological ruts so any sales effort, that deviates in the slightest from dogma, results in civil war. The only pitchmen the ideologues accept are the guys waving around the severed hand, talking about how their product is great at cleaning blood stains. Any concession to public sensibilities is treated like heresy. The result is a self-ghettoization of the movement.

This has always been the problem with the libertarians. You can get a large audience in favor of limiting state regulation of commerce, but you are never getting a critical mass around the idea of abandoning paper money. You can talk people into loosening up marijuana laws, but no one is signing up for legal meth sales. That’s why the limit on libertarians is to have some of their language appropriated by Buckleyites. Otherwise, they are seen as a collection of eccentric weirdos.

That’s what’s happening with the alt-right and its fellow travelers. The core believers refuse to give in on basic tactics, like banning Nazi gear or minimizing the JQ stuff. The result is anyone that tries to soften the image is attacked as a traitor. That’s what you see with the Stormies. Anglin can’t accept even the token compromises at a site like Gab, so he goes to war with it. This ensures that his followers never stray from the ghetto that he has created for them. It also means potential recruits have a reason to ignore him.

This does not mean the alt-right is condemned to having fat guys in their tighty-whities, dancing around at their events. To avoid that fate, they need to produce leaders with the credibility to swat down guys like Anglin, when he gets out of control, but also aware of the fact that growing the movement means appealing to the general public. That means softening the pitch and making some compromises. They don’t have anyone capable of doing that at he moment, but they better find some.

He’s absolutely right. That’s why I reluctantly accepted the need to move into video despite the existence of Castalia House; I realized that we will never reach the non-literate majority through the medium of books. We have to speak their language and meet them on their ground. We need to accept that our preferences are irrelevant in this regard.

This is always difficult. The literate don’t want to deal with non-literate media. The dialectic-speakers don’t want to deal with rhetoric. The non-aggressive don’t want to deal with aggression. The socialists don’t want to deal with subjective value. The pagans don’t want to deal with the Christian roots of the West.

But regardless of who we are and what we desire, we have to take reality as it is, not as we wish it to be.

Milo back at Berkeley

There has been a lot of talk about whether Milo would return to Berkeley and whether #FreeSpeechWeek would take place there. But yes, he is back and it is on. Team Milo has even prepared a little gift for everyone for the occasion. It’s called The Antifa Handbook (PDF), and, as it happens, it is almost entirely unlike the 4GW Handbook.

Fire the anthem-protesters

Donald Trump comes out hard against the NFL players protesting during the national anthem:

“We’re proud of our country. We respect our flag,” Trump said to loud applause at a campaign event in Alabama. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now’? He’s fired! He’s fired!”

Trump said an NFL owner who releases a player would instantly gain broad support across America.

“Some owner’s gonna do that. He’s gonna say, ‘That guy that disrespects our flag? He’s fired. And that owner . . . they’ll be the most popular person in this country. Because that’s total disrespect of our heritage. That’s total disrespect of everything we stand for,” Trump said.

Trump added that he believes fans should walk out if players don’t stand for the anthem.

“If you see it, even if it’s one player,” Trump said, “Leave the stadium.”

It’s a perfectly reasonable stance. We all know that the NFL wouldn’t hesitate to act if players started throwing Nazi salutes; they already come down hard on the expression of any opinion that is negative about homosexuality.

The Rubicon has been decisively crossed, so it’s time to start cracking down on “speech” Americans don’t like.

Always play by the rules that are actually in place, not by the rules that you wish were in place. I won’t say that I’ve entirely given up on the NFL, but I did not buy Game Pass this year and I have yet to watch a single game. I don’t think I will start this weekend either.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s response:

The NFL and our players are at our best when we help create a sense of unity in our country and our culture,” Goodell said. “There is no better example than the amazing response from our clubs and players to the terrible natural disasters we’ve experienced over the last month. Divisive comments like these demonstrate an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players, and a failure to understand the overwhelming force for good our clubs and players represent in our communities.”

I hope one of the NFL players calls out Goodell on this by kneeling while holding up a middle finger or a Nazi salute. It would be amusing to see how fast Red Roger would do an immediate 180.

CORROSION now in audiobook

Galactic society is ruled by algorithms. From interstellar travel and planetary terraforming to artificial intelligence and agriculture, every human endeavor has become completely dependent upon the hypercomplex equations that optimize the activities making life possible across hundreds of inhabited worlds. Throughout the galaxy, Man has become dependent upon the reliable operation of ten million different automated systems.

And when things begin to go wrong and mysterious accidents begin to happen no one has any idea what is happening, except for a sentient medical drone and the First Technocrat of Continox. But their ability to even begin to try fixing the unthinkably complicated problem of galaxy-wide algorithmic decay is made considerably more difficult by the fact the former is an outlaw and the latter is facing a death sentence.

Narrated by Jon Mollison, The Corroding Empire Book One: Corrosion, is 7 hours and 3 minutes long.

I’m also looking for 10 reviewers of Jerry Pournelle’s There Will Be War Volume VII. Email with V7 in the subject if you’re interested and can review on Amazon.

US-Russia conflict in Syria

This doesn’t strike me as a positive development. The Saker contemplates the significance of a Russian special forces operation in Syria.

Something rather unprecedented just happened in Syria: US backed “good terrorist” forces attempted a surprise attack against Syrian government forces stationed to the north and northeast of the city of Hama. What makes this attack unique is that it took place inside a so-called “de-escalation zone” and that it appears that one of the key goals of the attack was to encircle in a pincer-movement and subsequently capture a platoon of Russian military police officers deployed to monitor and enforce the special status of this zone. The Russian military police forces, composed mainly of soldiers from the Caucasus region, fought against a much larger enemy force and had to call for assistance. For the first time, at least officially, Russian special operations forces were deployed to rescue and extract their comrades. At the same time, the Russians sent in a number of close air support aircraft who reportedly killed several hundred “good” terrorists and beat back the attack (Russian sources speak of the destruction of 850 fighters, 11 tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, 46 armed pickup trucks, five mortars, 20 freighter trucks and 38 ammo supply points; you can see photos of the destroyed personnel and equipment here). What also makes this event unique is the official reaction of the Russians to this event.

Head of the Main Operations Department at Russia’s General Staff Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi declared that:

“Despite agreements signed in Astana on September 15, gunmen of Jabhat al-Nusra and joining them units that don’t want to comply with the cessation of hostilities terms, launched a large-scale offensive against positions of government troops north and northeast of Hama in Idlib de-escalation zone from 8 am on September 19 (…) According to available data, the offensive was initiated by American intelligence services to stop a successful advance of government troops east of Deir ez-Zor“.

Today, other Russian officials have added a not-so-veiled threat to this accusation. The Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov has declared that:

Russia unequivocally told the commanders of US forces in Al Udeid Airbase (Qatar) that it will not tolerate any shelling from the areas where the SDF are stationed (…) Fire from positions in regions [controlled by the SDF] will be suppressed by all means necessary.

This is unprecedented on many levels. First, the Russians clearly believe that this attempt to kill or capture a platoon of the Russian military police was planned by the United States. The fact that they are making this accusation officially shows the degree of irritation felt by the Russians about the duplicity of the Americans. Second, this is the first time, at least to my knowledge, that Russian Spetsnaz forces had to be sent in to rescue a surrounded Russian subunit. All Spetsnaz operators survived, but three of them were wounded in the operation (the Russians are not saying how badly). The close air support by very low flying SU-25 aircraft was obviously coordinated by Spetsnaz forward air controllers and probably saved the day. In other words, this was a close call and things could have ended much more badly (just imagine what the Takfiri crazies would have done, on video, to any captured Russian serviceman!). Finally, a US-organized attack on what was supposed to be a “de-confliction” zone combined with an attempt to capture Russian soldiers raises the bar for American duplicity to a totally new level.

It’s time to get US troops out of Iraq and Syria. Iran and Russia succeeded where the US failed, and now the US presence there is only likely to lead to trouble that the Trump administration cannot afford in light of the Korean situation.

Always focus on fighting on one front at a time unless one has absolutely no ability to avoid it. To do otherwise is not merely foolish, but risks disaster.

SJW tactics

I want to be sure that I didn’t forget any of them in the chapter of SJWADD devoted to them. I’m talking about the specific tactics, such as the “bait-and-report”, rather than the larger tendencies such as those described by the Three Laws of Social Justice.

If anything occurs to you, throw it out. I want to be as comprehensive as possible.

Journolist: Comics edition

A group of mainstream comic SJWs from Marvel and DC were caught planning to try to harass, and incite violence against, a critic of their work:

The comic book world has had its share of scandals, including the very recent and highly protested revelation that Captain America is really a Nazi, angering fans worldwide. Mark Waid, who recently took over the Captain America comic book for Marvel, has stepped into more hot water after appearing to call out a fan and popular YouTube reviewer for targeted harassment at this year’s Comic-Con on his Facebook page.

Richard Meyer has a YouTube channel called Diversity & Comics, where he reviews current comic books. Most of his reviews mock the overreaching and suffocating leftist messaging that has infiltrated the entire industry. I’ve seen enough of them to say with confidence that Meyer seems like a pretty nice guy with a passion for comic books. His reviews contain no swearing or major insults, just mild humor and a lot of chuckling.

To make matters worse and more embarrassing for the SJW crowd of comic book writers, a secret Facebook page was revealed where writers plotted to target Meyer with harassment meant to incite violence.

Taylor Esposito is a letterer for DC Comics and is clearly seen on the not-so-secret Facebook page insinuating that critics of their comics are likely to be violent, calling them “nutjobs.” Kelly Thompson of Marvel’s Star Wars Phasma and IDW’s infamous lady Ghostbusters joined in, claiming fear of the awful critics as the major reason she’s never been to a con as a professional. B. Clay Moore, who seems to have written something a long time ago, actually suggests harassing Meyer to the point of violence.

Meyer’s videos are low budget, filmed with his phone usually while sitting in his car or house flipping through comic books and chatting about the stories and plot lines, artwork and themes. It’s not exactly a hate crime. He is knowledgeable, interesting and intelligent and he clearly loves comic books. But he, and others like him, are facing an industry that seems to not want them anymore.

It’s going to be amusing to see just how upset these lunatics are next week. But in the meantime, it should surprise precisely no one that SJWs would attempt to destroy someone, however harmless and inoffensive he might be, for failing to submit to the Narrative.

If only it weren’t for those evil GamerGaters ComicGaters, they’d have gotten away with it too!

By the way, if anyone can suggest 3-5 examples of current SJW comics as bad as that recent She-Thor debacle, please put the links in the comments here. The more recent, the better.

UPDATE: Since I was apparently insufficiently clear, I am requesting links to the actual panels online, not YouTube videos or links to where the comic is sold.

The three types of superheroes

Alex Macris explains his critical theory of superheroes:

  1. Ordinary person accidentally becomes extraordinary through chance.
  2. Determined person becomes extraordinary through dedication and will.
  3. A person born with extraordinary gifts lives up to their birthright.

These are, respectively, proletariat, bourgeois, and aristocratic views of human achievement.

The proletariat sees success as a product of chance. “He got lucky.” “He won the lottery.” “He don’t deserve what he got.”

The bourgeois sees success as a product of hard work. “I earned what I’ve got.” “I tried harder.” “It’s a meritocracy.”

The aristocracy sees success as a product of nature. “Some people are born superior.” “Blood runs true.” “I was born to lead.” Examples of aristocratic heroes are Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Green Lantern.

Examples of bourgeois heroes are Batman, Green Arrow, Nightwing, Ozymandias, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow.

Examples of proletariat heroes are Spiderman, Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four.

Marvel’s mutants are interesting. A mutant who sees his mutation as a mighty gift, like Magneto, is aristocratic but typically a villain. A mutant who sees his mutation is a random event tends to be portrayed as a proletarian hero. Most of the X-Men fall into this group.

Overall, Marvel’s heroes tend to be more proletarian, while DC’s heroes tend to be more aristocratic, with bourgeois heroes in both. Under progressive influence, these roles still apply. DC heroes act with noblesse oblige as aristocratic patrons of the oppressed. Meanwhile Marvel heroes tend to suffer from oppression themselves, as in much of the X-Men tales.

Bourgeois heroes tend to be least susceptible to progressive re-purposing as their bootstrap heroism is inherently a conservative message. Hence the progressive critique of Batman for being a successful businessman who uses his skills to beat up criminals, e.g. oppressed people. A progressive Superman can use his powers to defend illegal immigrants, but a progressive Batman is just George Soros.

This analysis helps explain why the Batman movies had conservative undertones, and the X-Men movies had liberal ones.

As it happens, Alt⭐️Hero superheroes will initially be a combination of aristocratic and proletarian due to the unique collective origin story. But there will be more conventional bourgeois heroes as well as time goes on. As with most of my novels and short stories, there is the story, the metastory that encompasses it, and the metasquared story that underlies the whole thing that is not immediately apparent to the reader.

For example, very, very few readers of the Arts of Dark and Light epic fantasy series are aware yet of the metasquared story aspect of the series, if indeed any of them are.

Civil resistance in Catalonia

The Spanish government’s attempt to send in the Guardia Civil is being resisted by Catalonian dockworkers as well as the regional government.

More than 4,000 members of Spain’s Guardia Civil are being dispatched to the troubled region amid concerns over divided loyalties in the autonomous community’s own police force, the Mossos d’ Esquadra. Spanish authorities wanted to house the Guardia Civil officers on four cruise ships – two in Barcelona, one in Tarragona and another in Palamos.

But as thousands took to the streets to protest against the detention of Catalan officials, local dock workers joined the backlash. The Assembly of Stevedores of the Port of Barcelona announced that workers would not provide any services to boats carrying security forces, a decision it said was taken “in defence of civil rights”.

Colleagues in Tarragona quickly followed suit and the Catalan government then denied permission to dock in Palamos – which, unlike Barcelona and Tarragona, falls under regional rather than national control.

The moves to disrupt the deployment comes amid seething anger in Catalonia over the arrests of 14 people, most of them high ranking Catalan officials, during preparations for a referendum that has been declared illegal by Spain’s constitutional court.

Dramatic scenes unfolded across Barcelona and other Catalan towns as the Guardia Civil mounted 41 raids targeting government and presidential departments, as well as warehouses containing election material.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs and legalities of the matter that have been debated here over the past few days, it is apparent that the Catalonian secessionists are currently winning at the moral level of war despite the relative restraint of the Spanish government. This would suggest that they will continue to gain support from previously neutral parts, within and without Catalonia.