A non-vote for X is NOT a vote for Y

It seems we have to deal with this nonsense every four years. But to say that failing to vote for Trump is a vote for Hillary, or that a vote for Egghead McUtah is a vote for Hillary, is completely false. It is a mathematical absurdity. Consider:

  • If you vote for Trump, he has one vote. Hillary has zero votes.
  • If you vote for Johnson, he has one vote. Hillary has zero votes.
  • If you vote for Egghead McUtah, he has one vote. Hillary has zero votes.
  • If you don’t vote, Hillary has zero votes.

Under precisely NONE of these scenarios does Hillary get a single vote. Ergo, a vote for X is not, and can never be, a vote for Hillary, unless that vote is for Hillary.

Now, I think it would be reprehensibly stupid to vote for Johnson for the obvious reason that he is neither a Libertarian nor a libertarian. It would be slightly less stupid to vote for Stein, because while she is a Green socialist, at least she does not pretend to be anything else. It would be even more stupid to vote for Egghead McUtah, because he is a less serious presidential candidate than Milo Yiannopoulos.

Seriously, Milo is not only a more serious candidate, he has a better chance of one day becoming President of the United States than Egghead does. Heck, David French was a more serious candidate than Egghead.

The reason to vote for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton is not innumerate appeals to impossible mathematics, but that his proposed policies are the best that any Republican candidate for President has offered the public in living memory. If that’s not enough for you, if you’re more concerned about superficial matters relating to posture, presentation, and personal idiosyncracies, well, you probably shouldn’t be voting on anything anyhow.


It’s not a question of IF the polls are false

But rather, the degree to which they are falsified:

Now, for all of you out there who still aren’t convinced that the polls are “adjusted”, we present to you the following Podesta email, leaked earlier today, that conveniently spells out, in detail, exactly how to “manufacture” the desired data. The email starts out with a request for recommendations on “oversamples for polling” in order to “maximize what we get out of our media polling.”

I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling.

The email even includes a handy, 37-page guide with the following poll-rigging recommendations.  In Arizona, over sampling of Hispanics and Native Americans is highly recommended:

Research, microtargeting & polling projects
–  Over-sample Hispanics
–  Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
–  Over-sample the Native American population

For Florida, the report recommends “consistently monitoring” samples to makes sure they’re “not too old” and “has enough African American and Hispanic voters.”  Meanwhile, “independent” voters in Tampa and Orlando are apparently more dem friendly so the report suggests filling up independent quotas in those cities first.


–  Consistently monitor the sample to ensure it is not too old, and that it has enough African American and Hispanic voters to reflect the state.
–  On Independents: Tampa and Orlando are better persuasion targets than north or south Florida (check your polls before concluding this). If there are budget questions or oversamples, make sure that Tampa and Orlando are included first.

Meanwhile, it’s suggested that national polls over sample “key districts / regions” and “ethnic” groups “as needed.”


–  General election benchmark, 800 sample, with potential over samples in key districts/regions
–  Benchmark polling in targeted races, with ethnic over samples as needed
–  Targeting tracking polls in key races, with ethnic over samples as needed

It is not “wishful thinking” to distrust the polls. Nor is there a “natural tightening up” of the polls as election day approaches. The entire polling industry is an exercise in attempted manipulation of public opinion. That’s why there is so much media attention focused on it.

The Podesta email doesn’t merely prove that the poll-doubters are right to be dubious about their credibility, but demonstrates, once more, that the conspiracy theory of history is the only one that can properly account for historical events.

Moreover, the media narrative claiming that Hillary’s win is inevitable is nothing more than the First Law of SJW in action:

A confidential memo allegedly obtained from Correct The Record, a Democratic Super PAC, reveals a plan to “barrage” voters with high frequency polls that show Hillary ahead in order to “declare election over,” while avoiding any mention of the Brexit vote (which completely contradicted polls that said Brexit would fail).

Pursuant to which….


INFOSEXTANT: the Infogalactic extension

Thanks to Blake Roussel, you can now make sure that you’re always using Infogalactic instead of Wikipedia, no matter what links Google feeds you.

INFOSEXTANT is the browser extension to automatically change Wikipedia links to Infogalactic.

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/infosextant

Chrome (updated version): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/infosextant/plieanmckkckfcdfaobonmmmbeniaige

Opera version coming soon. Brave integration coming soon.

Thanks to everyone who is supporting Infogalactic, through editing it, through using it, through subscriptions and donations, and, of course, through technological development both internal and external. This isn’t merely happening, this is happening in a big way. Very soon we will announce tri-level editing, which is how we will reduce the potential for edit-warring while we develop the DONTPANIC engine required for the Phase Three preference filters.

Also, we are planning to hold an Alt-Tech event in Barcelona next summer featuring. In addition to featuring the individuals you would expect to be at such an event, I’m informed there will be that rarest of Pepes, a Vox Day book signing, which will only be the third in history.

If you’re seriously interested in attending, send me an email with BARCA in the subject and I’ll put you on the email list for the early bird offer.



“He has opened the doors to the demons of Hell”

Why anyone would still pay any attention to an Obama-voting moron like Walter Russell Mead is well beyond me:

President Obama’s faltering foreign policy has taken another serious hit. It is hard to think of another American president whose foreign policy initiatives failed as badly or as widely as Obama’s. The reconciliation with the Sunni world? The reset with Russia? Stabilizing the Middle East by tilting toward Iran? The Libya invasion? The Syria abstention? The ‘pivot to Asia’ was supposed to be the centerpiece of Obama’s global strategy; instead the waning months of the Obama administration have seen an important U.S. ally pivot toward China in the most public and humiliating way possible.
Duterte clearly thinks that humiliating Obama in this way is a solid career move. He certainly believes that China will support him against the critics at home and abroad who will wring their hands over his shift. He presumably has had some assurances from his Chinese hosts that if he commits his cause to them, they will back him to the hilt.

This points to a broader problem: Obama’s tortuous efforts to balance a commitment to human rights and the niceties of American liberal ideology with a strong policy in defense of basic American security interests have made the world less safe for both human rights and for American security. As the revisionist powers (Russia, China, and Iran) gain ground, foreign leaders feel less and less need to pay attention to American sermons about human rights and the rule of law. Death squads and extra-judicial executions on a large scale: the Americans will lecture you but China will still be your friend. Barrel bombing hospitals in Aleppo? The Russians won’t just back you; they will help you to do it. Obama’s foreign policy is making the world safer for people who despise and trample on the very values that Obama hoped his presidency would advance. His lack of strategic insight and his inability to grasp the dynamics of world power politics have opened the door to a new generation of authoritarian figures in alliance with hostile great powers.

Unintentionally, and with the best of intentions, he has opened the doors to the demons of Hell, and the darkest forces in the human spirit have much greater scope and much more power today than they did when he took the oath of office back in 2009.

Unintentionally? With the best of intentions? Is Mead talking about Obama or himself? Remember, as Mead excoriates Obama’s foreign policy, that he not only voted for Obama, but voted to re-elect him. But it’s not as if Obama’s foreign policy was any better from 2008 to 2012 than it has been from 2012 to 2016.

Moreover, the man quite obviously has learned nothing from his past mistakes. Juxtapose these two phrases from the same article.

  • “Secretary Clinton is well aware of just how damaging the Filipino defection is in Asia; she helped develop the Obama administration’s Asia strategy.”
  • “Should Secretary Clinton make it to the White House, her first and biggest job will be to stop and then reverse the deterioration in America’s global position that her predecessor permitted.”

So, Mead not only voted – twice – for the man who permitted the deterioration in America’s global position, but now advocates voting for the woman who helped develop that failed strategy.

Either Mead is incredibly stupid, or, as with Obama, we need to question whether he serves those very demons to whom the doors of Hell have been opened.

If there is not a Trumpslide on November 8th, there is a very good chance that the USA will find itself at war with a Russo-Chinese alliance. And that is a war that a USA saddled with the incompetent and unwell Hillary Clinton as Commander-in-Chief will almost certainly lose.


The suicidal altruism of Western women

But stupidity always has its consequences. Women’s rights are rapidly proving to be the mortal wounding of the West:

A woman opened her heart and her door to a 12-year-old boy who had fled the horrors of war in Afghanistan after losing his parents – or so she thought. In reality, not only was the boy in her care, Jamal, almost a decade older than she had been duped into believing, but he also had Taliban and child abuse material on his phone.

A dentist’s check found his age to actually be around 21 and a subsequent investigation uncovered the shocking content on his mobile, according to the Sun. She took Jamal to a climbing centre, where he displayed upper body strength far beyond his supposed years and also was able to completely strip a rifle at a shooting range.

While in her care, he shared a room with three children aged between 12 and 14.
Rosie told the paper’s Nigel Bunyan and Chris Pollard: ‘It’s ridiculous how everybody else could see it but not the social workers.’  Although she could not confirm if he was a terrorist, she was adamant he had spent time in a training camp.

She added that his last words to her were ‘I’ll kill you and I know where your children are.’

It probably would be a useful object lesson to the women of the West if he did. Unfortunately, female solipsism is such that too many women would merely scoff at the example, and argue that the object of their virtue-signaling, Abdul, is a wonderful boy who just loves to babysit for her two younger children.

There is a reason why the conquerors of the world either slaughtered the children of their enemies or enslaved them and turned them into slave-warriors. Because children always grow up. All these altruistic idiots are doing is ensuring that the next war between Christendom and the Dar al-Islam and will be fought here rather than there.

And the fact that Christendom is far less fundamentally Christian than the Dar al-Islam is fundamentally Muslim means that the odds are increasing in the latter’s favor. Bringing secularism to a civilizational war is akin to bringing a rubber knife to a gun fight.


Here be Dragon-winners

It has taken us rather longer than we would have liked to get our print process running smoothly, but Castalia House is pleased to announce that two books published earlier this year by our two Dragon Award-winning authors, Mr. John C. Wright and Mr. Nick Cole, are now available in hardcover.


IRON CHAMBER OF MEMORY is a deeply complicated tale of romance, mystery, and myth that has proven extremely popular with our readers, as its average 4.8-star rating tends to demonstrate.

The top review, from Richard Green, calls it “a wonderfully creepy, profound, sad and yet uplifting story.”

Wright’s latest is another fantastic and inventive piece from an author whose imaginative faculties boggle the mind. This book is a bit different from his universe-spanning COUNT TO A TRILLION series, and less baroque than SOMEWHITHER. I would compare it more to AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND and even A PARLIAMENT OF BEASTS & BIRDS; it is more intimate, following only three characters over a somewhat limited span of time, but it manages to encompass past, present, and future regardless.


IRON CHAMBER OF MEMORY retails for $24.99 and is available from Amazon or can be ordered through your local bookstore.

The new hardcover from Nick Cole, our other Dragon Award-winning novelist, THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNEW IT, is a war story, a post-apocalyptic zombie tale, and a deeply romantic tale of true love conquering all. It features an ending that is so flawless that, in my opinion, only John C. Wright and Jeff Sutton have ever done it better.

From the top review by J.R. Weaver:


Nearly every page is a gut-punch, whether it’s from the descriptions of a brutal war against the undead that makes World War Z look like a Sunday picnic, or the unvarnished look into the heart of a guy who’s lost everything. The characters are raw and brutal and real. The story is dark and uplifting at the same time. Mr. Cole is a romantic and wears it on his sleeve unashamedly.


THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNEW IT retails for $24.99 and is available from Amazon or can be ordered through your local bookstore.

Both books will also be available in trade paperback later this week. But most serious fans of Castalia’s two Dragons will want to own these case-bound hardcovers. Also, please note that we are aware that the cover images have not yet percolated through Amazon’s system yet, which can take up to 48 hours. And yes, the vagaries of Amazon’s algos have, for reasons completely unbeknownst to us, bestowed a PhD on Mr. Wright. Or, perhaps we should say, Dr. Wright.


Proving the point

Buwaya Puti, a reader who is a Filipino immigrant to the USA, has been insistent about the idea that he is too a real live American, as American as any Anglo-Saxon posterity of the men who fought the American Revolution. And then President Duterte signed a trade deal with China:

Just to clear a point – or three.

The Philippines didn’t invite you over. When Commodore Dewey sailed into Manila Bay, or when the US army sortied out of Manila to fight the Philippine Army in 1899, these were not welcome acts.

Nor was the building of bases. These were accepted as force majeure, that’s all.

The gratitude, properly, should go the other way. You guys dragged us into WWII, while our government did everything it could to keep us out of it. The Japs attacked us simply because you had bases there.

And because we kept on fighting, for you. The Malays, Indonesians, Siamese were not treated with the grotesque savagery we were because we were a loyal ally. And, dragging us into the war, you incompetently failed to keep up your end, providing pathetically insufficient means to keep your enemies away from our population.

You owe us, big time.

You guys = Americans. Us = Filipinos. Every. Single. Time. To repeat: Immigrants are not, and will never be, Americans. No matter how well they know American history and how much they swear they love baseball.

And even their great-grandchildren will still not be as loyal to America as to their own immigrant roots.

UPDATE: In fairness, Buwaya has pointed out that he is not a US citizen, merely an expat Filipino resident in the USA. However, my contention remains that his core loyalties would remain with his nation even if he accepted the US citizenship for which he is presumably eligible.


Truth or social justice?

Jonathan Haidt argues that universities face a choice:

Aristotle often evaluated a thing with respect to its “telos” – its purpose, end, or goal. The telos of a kife is to cut. The telos of a physician is health or healing. What is the telos of university?
The harvardmost obvious answer is “truth” –- the word appears on so many university crests. But increasingly, many of America’s top universities are embracing social justice as their telos, or as a second and equal telos. But can any institution or profession have two teloses (or teloi)? What happens if they conflict?

As a social psychologist who studies morality, I have watched these two teloses come into conflict increasingly often during my 30 years in the academy. The conflicts seemed manageable in the 1990s. But the intensity of conflict has grown since then, at the same time as the political diversity of the professoriate was plummeting, and at the same time as American cross-partisan hostility was rising. I believe the conflict reached its boiling point in the fall of 2015 when student protesters at 80 universities demanded that their universities make much greater and more explicit commitments to social justice, often including mandatory courses and training for everyone in social justice perspectives and content.

Now that many university presidents have agreed to implement many of the demands, I believe that the conflict between truth and social justice is likely to become unmanageable.  Universities will have to choose, and be explicit about their choice, so that potential students and faculty recruits can make an informed choice. Universities that try to honor both will face increasing incoherence and internal conflict.

But they don’t, really. The universities are, by and large, going to have to choose social justice. Truth will never serve any institution that depends upon a partnership with government and the banks to prey upon unsuspecting young people in order to mortgage their futures.


A lesson in Gamma

So, this would have appeared to come out of the blue to everyone on Gab yesterday.

Allen Ayler@PseudoCrusader
@voxday You follow just 32 people. Must be your egotistical self importance.

Vox Day@voxday
Very foolish, Allen. I was going to leave our email exchange private, but I’ll go ahead and publish it on Alpha Game now.

It is a powerful lesson in not permitting Gammas in your project.

As a general rule, I don’t expose people who email me, whether they are readers, critics, or even hatemailers. But sometimes, it is beneficial to do so, in order to provide an object lesson to those who believe that they can behave abusively with impunity, particularly in cases where there is a deeper lesson to be learned. And it’s never a bad thing to remind people, from time to time, that picking a fight with someone whose friends and allies call him “Supreme Dark Lord” is probably not a wise thing to do.

But before you think I am attempting to rationalize a violation of privacy, please be aware that he has publicly requested that I post it: “Please post my email so people can know how full of shit you are.” Also, on Gab: “Post the fucking email you hypocrite self-deluded asshole.”

One of the challenges of running any organization, be it professional or volunteer, is dealing with the quirks of the various members, most of which are based on their socio-sexual status. Alphas are going to have inappropriate affairs, Betas are going to get promoted over their heads, Lambdas are going to talk relentlessly, and inappropriately, about their personal predilections and social lives, Gammas are going to preen, posture, pout, and occasionally sabotage projects and people, Sigmas are going to create the occasional intra-organizational upheaval, for good or ill, and Omegas are going to get themselves accused of sexual harassment.

That’s all normal. You have to expect it as long as you’re going to work with human beings. The key is learning to anticipate the problems and head them off at the pass. Don’t let the Alpha hire a hot secretary, or at the very least, be sure she isn’t married. Keep the Beta in a well-paid supporting position and give him a young subordinate Alpha to help him make decisions. Put the Lambda near the women where he’ll entertain them. Try to steer the Sigma’s idiosyncracies in a direction where he’ll help the organization rather than harm it. Give the Gammas tasks that flatter their egos and keep them far away from any managerial responsibilities. Stash the Omegas where they can’t creep out the women. Keep everybody out of the way of the Deltas who actually do most of the meaningful work.

Anyhow, this exchange took place two days ago. I would have let it go, except the Gamma concerned simply couldn’t resist taking it public. Gammas, as Delta Man has repeatedly pointed out, not only sabotage others, they also tend to sabotage themselves. But I have seldom seen a Gamma sabotage himself so thoroughly as Mr. Ayler managed to do when attempting to volunteer to “help” Infogalactic.

I’m not saying there was anything wrong with his desire to know what was going on. Nor am I defending my failure to respond to him in a timely manner. But, as you’ll see, my initial impression that there was something off about him proved to be correct. In spades.