The Trumpening marches on

The Democratic race is getting interesting. Hillary is looking worse and worse as the Master Persuader turns his attention to Crooked Hillary, and it’s not at all impossible that Crazy Bernie will end up with more actual delegates than the presumptive nominee.

The ironically named Democrats have a superdelegate system to prevent democracy from getting in the way of the establishment’s selection, but it’s not unlikely that the pledged superdelegates will see losing the delegate contest as a reason to break their promises to Hillary Clinton. She is, after all, Crooked.

Introducing Rod Walker

Mutiny in Space by Rod Walker is the first in a new line of juvenile science fiction novels from Castalia House.

When the radical revolutionaries of the Social Party prevent his attendance at university and make his life on New Chicago impossible, Nikolai Rovio has no choice but to accept his starship-bound uncle’s offer to take refuge in space and sign on as a technical apprentice with Starways. But space, he quickly learns, is full of dangers that can kill a young man just as dead as even the most bloodthirsty revolutionary. 

And no place that Man can travel will ever be able to provide safe refuge from ambitious and evil-minded men. 

Rod Walker is the New New Heinlein, and Mutiny in Space marks a first step in the long-awaited, much-needed return of science fiction to its classical form and historical heights. Written in the style and tradition of Robert Heinlein’s 12 classic juvenile novels published by Scribner, Mutiny in Space is an exciting tale of space, technology, courage, independence, and the indomitable spirit of Man. 

Written by Rod Walker and edited by three-time Hugo-nominated editor Vox Day, Mutiny in Space is 200 pages, DRM-free, and $4.99/£4.99. Available only on Amazon.

We are very excited about our new series of Rod Walker books, because they are exactly what we founded Castalia House to publish. They are pure Blue SF, and contain no foul language, no adult themes, no nihilism, and they are 100 percent social justice-free. Robert Heinlein revitalized science fiction with just 12 wonderful novels – 13, if one counts Starship Troopers which was originally supposed to be a Scribner novel, but was foolishly turned down – and we believe it is possible to do achieve similar effects by applying the same principles that made his early novels so successful.

Except, of course, for the issue of gun control. Gun control was a particular bugaboo of Heinlein’s editor at Scribner, Alice Dalgleish, and while the Rod Walker books will not feature Correia-style gun porn, neither will they contain any anti-gun propaganda of the sort Dalgleish imposed on Heinlein.

Anyhow, the Rod Walker books are intended to be books that can serve to successfully introduce boys and girls to science fiction again.

UPDATE: It’s easy to tell the SJWs are worried about this new development, as they’re already posting attack reviews. Message fiction masquerading as Heinlein pastiche.

UPDATE 2: Not a bad start for Mr. Walker.

  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327 Paid in Kindle Store
        #3 in Books > Children’s Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction
        #9 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Science Fiction

You can’t shame the Alt Right

It’s fascinating to see how SJWs and other media types simply cannot grasp the fact that the tactics and techniques that worked in pre-internet days simply don’t function in the social media era.

The rise of Trump has been distressing to many people on many levels. It turned out that so many people were hungry for a message of strength, after years of “leading from behind” rhetoric, that they ignored that the message came with vague platitudes and limited workable proposals. For Jews it exposed a lingering suspicion that there exist a lot of people who simply don’t like and don’t accept us as Americans. For Republican Jews, who pride themselves on voting with the people who have unwavering support for Israel, it was especially sad to see these people consider themselves on our political side. When Donald Trump inevitably fades away, and he will with either a bang or a whimper, perhaps these people will retreat back into the shadows. But it will no longer be possible for Jews to ignore that they are there.

It seems very, very difficult for Jews to understand that most people do not give a quantum of a damn about them. That’s not a bad thing, most people don’t care about Eskimos or Filipinos or Malaysians either. People care about themselves and their own nation. That’s pretty much it.

And why would Americans accept Jews as Americans if all they ever hear from Jews is a few of them on television complaining about how everyone hates Jews, how terrible, awful, and evil Americans are, and how white America needs to be destroyed? How is that even conceivable?

Here’s the reality: holocaustianity has timed out. No one under the age of 40 cares any more about it than they do about the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. A lot of them don’t care about being called racist or sexist, so why would they care about being called anti-semitic? They think being called a Nazi by lame old people is hilarious; their usual response is to bury the accuser in dank memes full of images that would give the average Baby Boomer a stroke.

The shame game is over. This is the new reality. Deal with it or deny it, but it’s here to stay regardless.

Cathy Young is an America-hater

It’s downright remarkable that Cathy Young appears to think her defense of a double-standard in her attack on Ann Coulter will convince anyone of anything but her being a dishonest and perfidious anti-American propagandist.

Those familiar with the alt-right will recognize one of its favorite talking points: Israel supporters—particularly Jews—are hypocritical if they support immigration into the U.S., since they don’t advocate large-scale non-Jewish immigration into Israel or the Palestinian right of return. (It is invoked, for example, in an unabashedly anti-Semitic primer on “How to Argue with Neocons” on an alt-right blog.) Regardless of what one thinks of immigration to the United States, or of Israeli policies, this is a remarkably bad analogy.

Israel was founded as an ethno-state (though it is worth noting that a quarter of its citizens are not Jewish); the United States of America was not. Israel is surrounded by hostile neighbors; the United States is not. A Palestinian right of return would mean forcing a nation of eight million to accept as many as four to five million immigrants many of whom are hostile to its statehood; proportionately, that would be analogous to an influx of 150 million into the U.S. If such a proposal were on the table, Coulter and Trump certainly wouldn’t be the only ones to oppose it.

The “double standards” argument has blatantly anti-Semitic overtones, since it invariably invokes Israel and never other small nations, like Finland, that limit immigration and grant automatic citizenship on the basis of ethnic background.

A few relevant points:

  • American Jews are absolutely hypocritical if they support large-scale immigration into the USA while opposing it for Israel. They are also observably anti-American.
  • It is not a “a remarkably bad analogy”. It is a very fair and pertinent comparison.
  • Israel was not founded as an ethno-state. It is an ethno-religious state. An ethnic Jew who is a Christian is not permitted the right of return. Moreover, since Israel already grants citizenship to Palestinians, the nature of its founding in this regard is not relevant.
  • The USA absolutely was founded as an ethno-state. “The original United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790 provided the first rules to be followed by the United States in the granting of national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were free white persons of good character. It thus excluded American Indians, indentured servants, slaves, free blacks, and Asians.”
  • The state of relations with Israel’s neighbors are irrelevant. China is not at war with Israel and Israel does not permit unlimited immigration from China, or from the United States, for that matter.
  • Since Jews like Cathy Young believe that large-scale immigration is a beneficial thing, why wouldn’t four million immigrants benefit Israel?
  • The US population was 194 million in 1965. The 61 million immigrants who have entered the country since would be identical to permitting 2.5 million Palestinians to return to Israel. Is Cathy Young willing to permit just 2.5 million Palestinians to return? If that many, proportionately, would be bad for Israel, how can she argue the same percentage is good for the USA?
  • The reason the double-standards argument invariably invokes Israel and never small nations like Finland is because no Finns are publicly arguing for large-scale immigration to the United States or calling everyone who disagrees with them anti-Finnites.

Cathy Young’s argument fails historically, mathematically, and logically. Ann Coulter is right. Israel has the right to exist and defend its borders. So does the United States of America. Cathy Young, being an openly anti-American extremist opposed to the American national interest, should be rejected by every American, and especially by every conservative.

As for the Alt Right, well, we already knew she was dreadful.

Wrath of the Rabid

Hugos Vs Puppies IV: Wrath of the Rabid

Mere minutes after the nominations were announced, John Scalzi said that the Puppies were attempting to lead a parade that was already in motion, by nominating works of obvious quality that probably would have been nominated anyway.  George R. R. Martin made a similar observation:

    The Rabids used a new tactic this year. They nominated legitimate, quality works in addition to the dross. Works by writers like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, Alastair Reynolds,…Andy Weir, and several others. Some of these writers are apolitical (like Weir) while others are known to oppose everything that VD stands for (Gaiman, Stephenson, King).

This is a tacit admission that the Puppies are doing exactly what they claim to be doing–nominating “legitimate, quality works” based on “excellence in actual science fiction and fantasy,” regardless of the political stance of the nominated writer.

And while the bulk of the nominations are obviously for deserving works–Stephen King received his first nomination for over thirty years–several of them are…unique.

Two
Best Related Work nominations, however, are generally being overlooked
in the furor over My Little Ponies (and Chuck Tingle’s gay dinosaur
erotica in space), and those are much more problematic.  “The Story of
Moira Greyland” outs fantasy writer Marion Zimmer Bradley for abuse and
molestation, and “Safe Space as Rape Room” by Daniel Eness raises some
very uncomfortable questions about science fiction fandom.

Uncomfortable questions indeed. Questions which pedophandom is desperate to avoid asking, or being answered.

Why #whitegenocide doesn’t work

The objectives of the white nationalists behind the #whitegenocide meme are laudable. They seek to defend the right of people of European descent to live, to maintain European cultures, and to preserve European nations. They seek to demonstrate that diversity is intrinsically anti-European. These are all very good, desirable, and for those of us who value Western civilization, true and necessary goals. Western civilization is a European construct.

But the #whitegenocide meme simply does not achieve its purpose, it does not work, because it is a misguided attempt to use dialectic in the place of rhetoric. This is obvious, because those who use that particular meme are always – always – having to rationally explain and justify it. And it can be justified rationally, at least to those with a reasonable grasp of history and sufficiently long time preferences. But that doesn’t make it good rhetoric.

As those who have read SJWAL know, the fact that something can be rationally justified is not only an entirely different question than whether something is rhetorically effective, it is a very strong indicator that the meme in question is not rhetorically effective due to the fact that it is clearly not rhetoric at all. One does not persuade the emotions through the use of logic.

When people think of “genocide”, of what do they think? What is the one single word that immediately springs to mind when someone says “genocide” to you? It’s not “Holocaust”, it’s not “Jews”, it’s not “Rwanda”, it is “bodies”. We are all programmed to think of stacks of bodies, limp and scrawny and robbed of all dignity, when we hear the word “genocide”.

Well, where are the white bodies? They don’t exist. So, to make the connection between the term “genocide” and the serious problem of the 50-year assault on the various European nations and cultures requires an abstract leap, and what is worse, an abstract leap that ignores the instinctive emotional connection. So, #whitegenocide fails because it is not rhetoric at all, it is pure dialectic that predictably fails to move the emotions.

Contrast, in comparison, this ad for The Man in the High Castle which was quickly pulled because it was inadvertently serving as effective propaganda for the very ideas and peoples it was attempting to denigrate. It was run with the hashtag #whatifwelost.

What if we lost? That snapshot of a supposedly scary future looks like a considerable improvement on 21st century America, in which single white mothers raise irreligious, low-IQ, racially-mixed bastards in tenements without support from the children’s fathers, most people are up to their eyeballs in debt with less than $400 in savings, no one under the age of 40 can afford to buy a home, and it is illegal to fly the American flag lest it harm the tender sensibilities of young Aztec invaders.

Remember, the best rhetoric is based on truth. In this case, the effectiveness was rooted in the truths being communicated emotionally regardless of what the creator’s intentions were. With the rise of tribal politics, the Alt Right, and Trump shattering the Overton Window, something that looks very much like that, less the swastikas, will be a successful campaign ad within a decade.

As #GamerGate has demonstrated, the best memes are visual rather than verbal and they appeal to the emotions rather than to the intellect. They should be positive rather than negative, radiating confidence and certainty rather than fear and doubt. Some of the best memes I’ve seen are those produced by female white nationalists, which tend to feature pretty blonde white women in traditional dresses with white children; women respond to them with either palpable longing or instinctive rage.

The exact terminology doesn’t matter. Both #GamerGate and #NotYourShield were successful hashtags. The Young Swedish Democrats slogan “Europe Belongs to Us” is remarkably stirring. So, I would suggest that white nationalists use hashtags such as #WhiteAmerica, #WhiteWest, and #Whatifwewon, combined with positive imagery, if they want to gain more traction among those who value Western civilization and find white people attractive. Another option would be #WAGA, or White America Great America, which would be an effective spinoff of the Trumpean #MAGA.

Now, I think self-identified white nationalists have a challenge in front of them, in that only in America does a singular “white nationalism” really mean anything; in Europe the various white nationalisms are entirely distinct, and indeed, this is part of the problem that the many American Indian nations failed to surmount. That is why they would do well to endorse all nationalisms from America to Zion; I am an avowed Red Nationalist myself, and I suspect even the most rabid white nationalist has no problem with sovereign Indian reservations.

It is hard, after all, to argue with “France for the French, Israel for the Jews, America for the Americans.” The globalists can only win – assuming that is even possible, which it probably isn’t – if the various nationalists fail to ally against them. That is why “nationalism” is such a scary word to them, whereas they love nothing better than to accuse people of “white nationalism” or “white supremacy”.

The dank memes are important too, of course, and that is where the “Immigration is Rape Culture” sort of attacks are effective. But they are most effective when they attack undesirable consequences rather than specific groups of people. In general, when it comes to rhetoric, it is best to be direct in defense, indirect in attack. Consider how #GamerGate seldom aimed memes at Gawker or Kotaku or Polygon, but at the lack of ethics in game journalism, which everyone knew applied to Gawker, Kotaku, and Polygon.

White people have the unalienable right to live in white societies if they so choose. That right is called free association, and diversity, multiculturalism, and immigration are all anti-Constitutional, anti-American attacks on that. As an American Indian, I hope enough of them are wise enough to exercise that right before they, too, are forced upon their own Trail of Tears amidst the shattered remnants of Western Civilization.

If you want to learn more about the difference between dialectic and rhetoric, and how to make effective use of the latter, I strongly recommend reading my book SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police. It has an entire chapter devoted to the subject.

Reviewers wanted

Castalia has been publishing a lot of non-fiction of late. But over the next few months, we’re going to be getting back to our original mission, which is advancing the state of Blue SF, which is to say science fiction that is written in the spirit of the science fiction giants, particularly Robert Heinlein.

So, I’m looking for 10 volunteers who can review for Amazon a forthcoming book by an author we are billing as the New New Heinlein – he does Heinlein better, more respectfully, and in a much more original way than Scalzi ever did – as well as 10 volunteers who can review a novel that is written in the tradition of Louis L’Amour.

That’s right, in addition to the return to Blue SF, we’re bringing back the Western too. So, if you’re ready, able, and willing to read and review one of these books in short order, please email me with either BLUE SF or WESTERN in the title.

UPDATE: We have enough reviewers, thank you!

In addition to TWO new John C. Wright novels we will be publishing this summer and fall, I’m particularly excited to publish a novel that I can only describe as written in the tradition of W. Somerset Maugham’s short stories. It’s intelligent, funny, and remarkably good.

Our range is becoming increasingly eclectic, but as I told David the Good after his second-straight book went #1 in Gardening, (the Kindle and Paperback editions of Grow or Die are currently #3 AND #5 in the category) Castalia House has four major guidelines for the books we publish:

  • Expected #1 category bestseller. If it’s not at least as popular as the most popular books in its category, it’s probably not for us. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad book, but we intend to not only maintain, but improve our level of quality as we grow. As more good authors exit the orbit of the failing major publishers, we expect more of them to come our way.
  • Intelligent. We don’t aim for the lowest common denominator. We’ll leave that to everyone else.
  • Different and original. As Marc Aramini openly informed his SJW critics at Making Light, no one else would have published Between Light and Shadow. No one, because it was a crazy, unprofitable thing to do. Even Gene Wolfe, though flattered, thought the project was completely insane. It is brilliant and unique and completely over the heads of everyone who isn’t a Wolfe fanatic, myself included. And that’s why we published it.
  • No SJWs. We publish science fiction. We publish fantasy. We publish science. We publish philosophy. We publish religion. We publish literary analysis. We publish gardening. We publish economics. We are in the process of publishing both Westerns and literary novels. But we do not publish social justice in any form.

On a tangential note, I should note that later this year, there will be another debate on free trade. We’re still sorting out the timing and the details, but it appears Robert Murphy, Thomas Woods, and myself will be involved.

Second Law

You can almost hear the gritted teeth at NY Mag. But he’s laughing. Oh, yes, indeed, he is so laughing:

Space Raptor Butt Invasion is about a man and a raptor who become romantically involved in space. “Soon enough,” according to its synopsis, “Lance becomes close with this mysterious new astronaut, a velociraptor. Together, they form an unlikely duo, which quickly begins to cross the boundaries of friendship into something much, much more sensual.”

But Tingle, who is pseudonymous and speaks on Twitter in a stilted, broken cadence, is having none of it. He spent much of this week trolling the Puppies and their ridiculous white-supremacist leader Vox Day on Twitter. He also released a new story, Slammed in the Butt by My Hugo Award Nomination.

Best of all, Tingle has appointed Zoe Quinn — the primary target of the Gamergate horde for the last couple of years — to serve as his proxy should he actually win. In other words, every Puppy vote for Chuck Tingle is also a vote to give Quinn more visibility and a platform to explicitly refute their bullshit.

I sometimes wonder what planet these SJWs think they’re orbiting. Literally Who has been featured in fictional form in TV shows, has been the cause of the destruction of both 4chan and Gawker, and has even testified at the United Nations. But giving her more visibility and a platform, well that just proves that, um, Puppies are stupid white supremacist Gamerhaters!

That’s clearly the Narrative. Remember, SJWs must always claim victory. So, if “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” wins the Hugo for Best Short Story, then it’s me and the Rabid Puppies who will look ridiculous. Got it? 

Tingle has also been relentlessly owning Vox on Twitter by calling him “Voxman” and concocting bizarre memes using the movie Grandma’s Boy, which is about a 35-year-old manchild who works as a video game tester. So if Space Raptor Butt Invasion really does win an award, which is still pretty unlikely, it’s not going to look like the victory Vox Day and the Puppies wanted. They’re the ones who are going to look ridiculous, and if it’s a victory for gay space dinosaur erotica as well then that’s OK too.

Owning. Relentlessly. As I’ve said, SJWs simply can’t maintain a coherent narrative. It’s going to be fascinating to hear them explain how the SF-SJWs no-awarded the super-funny, masterfully brilliant Shakespeare of our time. Just like, well, Mr. Sixth of Five himself.

It’s really not fair

But sometimes they throw you a big fat one right over the plate:

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
A white woman who has a child with a black father has a 2 percent chance of the father financially supporting that child.

lionorder ‏@lionorder
That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard all day. There’s proof that black dads are more hands on then others.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Child abuse doesn’t count, sport.

One has to keep one’s hand in, if one is to remain an Award-Winning Cruelty Artist, after all.

Democrats fear the Trumpening

And well they should:

Republicans are divided, the economy is improving, the demographics are increasingly in Democrats’ favor. The likeliest result of a Trump nomination is a Republican washout up and down the ballot.

I do get all that.

Still, when I hear smart people explaining why Trump cannot win, all I can think is: Aren’t you the ones who told us that he couldn’t top 30 percent, and then 40 percent, and then 50 percent in the Republican primaries? Weren’t you confident that he was finished after he called Mexicans rapists, and insulted prisoners of war, and dished out a menstruation insult?

Did you predict his nomination? If not, we don’t want to hear your certainty about his November defeat.

Nor is it reassuring to read how happy the Clinton camp must be to be facing such a weak opponent. They need to be running scared — smart, but scared — now and for the next six months.

Crooked Hillary Clinton is running scared of Dangerous Donald Trump. And it’s not going to do her any good at all.