The Disassociate game

This illustrates why you should never, ever, pay any attention to whatever concerns a moderate brings to your attention, whether he is of the ideological, political, or religious variety. At the same time one concerned Christian was urging me to disassociate from Greg Johnson, Dalrock was being urged to disassociate himself from me:

Dalrock,

I have always wondered why you associate yourself with Vox Day. His brand of “Christianity” seems far from yours. You always seem bring the same message of God’s Truth and Justice tempered by His Mercy that we hear in the Gospels, Epistles and the writings of the Church Fathers. Vox seems to forget the Mercy part, fly through the Truth part, and screech headfirst into the Justice part. Every single time. That, and his ardent support for Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik, make me wonder why you continue to link to him and his writings?

Have a blessed Christmas.

Jim Oglethorpe

Moderates of the Christian variety love to play Christian Police of some sort or another. Sometimes it is Sin Police, sometimes it is Theology Police, sometimes it is Appearance Police. Regardless, their primary concern is looking inoffensive to the world and virtue-signaling their church associates. Any overlap with Christian theology and teachings is mostly coincidental.

And, of course, any failure to take their “obviously important” concerns seriously immediately results in a tantrum. HS has already sent two three more emails today: 

No adult reply. No doubt you’re busy.  But…why would I try to fool the
unfoolable? Though it is always somewhat gratifying to see an
expectation fulfilled.

Oh, hey, the little Gamma keeps seeking attention. I’m shocked.

I have to admit, I am surprised at what a child you really are.

And here I’m not even the least bit surprised to see that you are a petty name-calling Gamma. Give it up, HS. You’re not the Christ Police.

Sorry Junior, I don’t play video games. Your juvenile name-calling (gamma?) is lost on me. But don’t bother informing me. It’s pathetic. All I need to know. I can see that I’ve gotten under your thin skin. But given that you’re laughably immature, I feel I’m engaging a 16 year old in this back and forth. And it’s gotten to be embarrassing. Take the last word Junior. You know, like an obnoxious child demands.

Why are you still emailing me? Is this some sort of Gamma fangirl thing? Run along now. 

No doubt the non-Christians of the world are awed by these tremendous testimonials for the faith. I would simply encourage them to keep in mind that it is a fundamental logical error to judge the verity of the ism by the idiosyncratic behavior of the individual ist. For many years, that was a real stumbling block for me.

This has nothing to do with HS being a Christian, and everything to do with him being a Gamma.

Mailvox: interviews and the granting thereof

HS objects to my permitting Greg Johnson to ask me questions about my latest book, Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America.

I am a born again Christian. I believe you profess the same. Therefore, why would you grant interviews with someone so warped as Johnson on every level. He not only is a sodomite but an atheist, paganism-pusher, and sodomite-hostile to Christianity and Christians. Perhaps you are not a regenerate man nor do you possess much in the way of principles. This would then, of course, explain the matter. Johnson even says you “honored” him in your recent book. This is a disgrace, disgusting. Perhaps you will deign to reply to me and explain. But probably not. I think you have something of a duty as a professing Christian to explain yourself. Since I as a fellow believer have asked and being as that the question is biblically legitimate I think you are so obligated.

First, HS should get off his ridiculous high horse. It is neither polite nor Christian to demand an answer and offer a justification for doing so before one has even given the person one is asking the chance to respond.

Second, HS is wrong. I am happy to answer his question.

Third, since I first became a public figure in 2001, I have made a regular practice of answering anyone who wishes to ask me questions. Including HS, even though he is an impolite boor, and Mr. Johnson, even though he does not share my views on a wide variety of subjects.

Would HIS similarly criticize Jesus Christ for not only speaking with, but actually dining with, prostitutes and tax collectors?

HS responded in what can only be described as textbook Gamma style:

First, let me say I appreciate your prompt reply. Though I was surprised at its jejune and unsophisticated nature. My email was direct, even demanding and legitimately so. That is, if my charges were accurate. You deny nothing of what I have charged save an unimportant suggestion that you may not care to respond, which I initially addressed. Thus you tacitly acknowledge said accuracy. You are indeed accountable for unbiblical public behavior. And it is reasonable for me or any Christian to expect such from you or any other public figure also professing a Christian faith –  in some venue or other.  Your appearance of being in league with a patent enemy of the Gospel is scandalous. For you to argue this is plain contumacy. Further, your cliché reflex in bringing up the Lord in his ministry shows only hack disingenuousness. It is precarious ground to draw conclusions from Jesus’ ministry for general behavior on our part in any instance but you are clearly badly mistaken in this particular offering. Our Lord NEVER socialized with people who were decidedly hostile to Himself and hateful to his disciples. And this is precisely what you do vis a vis Johnson. In mere personal terms, as a Christian, how can you not be repelled by this individual on a number of levels? Forgive the digression. I notice that you didn’t trouble yourself to even identify as a Christian in your email. But then you may feel my impolite tone preempts this. Which brings me to a conclusion. That you are concerned with impoliteness and boorishness (complete nonsense – remember? You run a rough-and-tumble blog – “boor?” – lol) rather than the obviously important substance of my email further discredits you. Why do I not expect a reply that will be other than pure defensive/self-centeredness?

I have to admit, I really, really struggle to not hate Gammas. Literally everything they do is almost breathtakingly annoying; no wonder they get bullied and abused so often when they are young. I expect this is the kind of guy who tweets his breakfasts and genuinely believes his bowel movements are “obviously important” to everyone. Now, here is the interview with the pagan to which HS importantly objected so vociferously.

GJ: Seriously, the thing that gets me about what you call Churchianity, which is a good term, the Churchians today is they seem to want to deny that it’s moral and right to have any preference for your own children over strangers, for your own country over neighbors, for your own race over other races, and yet you zero in on that in the New Testament indicating that no, those sorts of preferences were regarded as natural.

Looking at Aquinas, for instance. Aquinas in his Questions on Charity basically he says, “Yes, God’s love flows through all of creation, but creation consists of hierarchies and concentric circles of relationships, and so you have a natural preference for your own over strangers, and that structure of preferences doesn’t impede the grace of God, and it’s not something that needs to be fought against or disdained.” And yet what you’ve got with Christians today is this pure xenophilia, this perverse attitude that your neighbor is not your neighbor. No, the neighbor is someone who is far more foreign than your neighbor, and in fact your preference for these foreigners often turns your neighbor’s life in to a living hell.

VD: Right, but again, these are people who call themselves Christians, but when they’re preaching immigration from the Gospel, they’re doing exactly what the Apostle Paul warned about, which is the whole wolf in sheep’s clothing. These are not Christians.

I’m not playing no true Scotsman here. I’m saying these are not people for the most part… And I’m talking about the leaders, I’m not talking about the average church members.

GJ: Right.

VD: These are people who worship at the Temple of Babel.

GJ: Right.

VD: I would not be surprised at all if many of them actually served some other god. I actually got the concept of SJW entryism from being told about a church that had been basically invaded by people who had managed to take it over and the crazy thing is, I mention this in the book, the same thing happened 20 years later at one of the churches that my parents attended. I actually know one of the pastors involved and my uncle was on the board of the church. They ended up getting invaded by these SJWs, who promptly announced that they had a vision for combining Christianity with Islam and wanted to call it Chrislam.

Now, you cannot possibly hold Christianity responsible for that, because that is anti-Christianity of a sort that Richard Dawkins never dreamed of.

GJ: Oh God, yes! The core issue is really the idea of charity and loving your neighbor and being kind to strangers and so forth, and that notion carries a great deal of moral weight even in the minds of non-Christians. It’s been perverted into an attitude where you measure your virtue by the degree to which you betray the people close to you and side with people far away. It overturns families, it overturns communities, and it overturns societies. It’s just a kind of moralistic absurdity that is an agent of chaos and destruction.

VD: And you’ve seen The Lord of the Rings. What do we usually call a good that is perverted into something else other than its purpose?

GJ: Well, you tell me.

VD: We usually call that evil.

GJ: Evil. Yeah.

VD: I think this Churchianity is absolutely evil. I think it is absolutely of the devil. I don’t think you even need to be Christian to pick up the scent of brimstone from it. I realize for your secular viewers that may sound nuts, and that’s fine, but my point is that the good news for the secular and the pagan Right is that true Christianity, the Christianity that exploded across the world, and the Christianity that caused the lands of Europe to become Christendom, is ultimately on your side in that regard.

There’s no question about that. Even someone like Anders Breivik recognized it. Breivik is not a Christian. He does not worship Jesus Christ, but he described himself as a cultural Christian because he understood that connection.

GJ: Right.

VD: In Europe, that’s going to be the big factor of change. It’s not an accident that Putin often speaks in religious terms. It’s not an accident that the forces that are rising in Poland and Hungary . . . Even Hungary, like you said, is fairly secular, but when you listen to the nationalists speak they often speak about the Christian heroes, the Christian kings.

GJ: Oh yeah.

VD: But the most important thing to keep in mind, and I think it’s something that can inspire seculars and pagans as well, and it’s something that I always enjoy telling atheists, because they say there are fewer Christians now in America than there were before and I always say, “Hey, we only need 11.”

How terrible, that a Christian should speak of Aquinas, and Christian theology, and of the words of Jesus Christ himself, with an unbeliever!

SJWs disemploying people

Those who whine and cry about my responding to SJWs who place fake attack reviews on Amazon, among other things, like to pretend that I engage in unprovoked offensive tactics rather than in defensive deterrents.

But as we know, SJWs always lie. Consider this recent tweet of SJW Margaret Cho:

Margaret Cho @margeretcho
http://racistsgettingfired.tumblr.com  is a great resource on what to do with racists on here.

The site, RacistsGettingFired, even maintains a list of people who have lost their jobs as a result of their actions, such as this woman.

SJWs always cry out in pain as they strike you. And the main reason they fear me now is because I pay no attention whatsoever to their cries of innocence and self-justification and being off-limits despite their aggressive tactics. They know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that they cannot take a shot at me, my allies, my friends, or my supporters without taking a hit or three in return. Because we are disciplined, because we tell the truth, and because we only respond to their attacks by utilizing tactics they have themselves introduced, we are beating them at the moral level of cultural war.

It’s very simple. They act, I observe, I decide on the reprisal, and the VFM go into action. I know a lot of the VFM are feeling restless and underutilized, but the fact is that of the six successful actions in which they have engaged over the last two months, I have only required the participation of about eight percent of them. The goal is to achieve the objective, not to make a noise. When the objective is to make a noise, trust me, I’ll let you know.

The fact is that SJWs are out to disqualify, discredit, and disemploy everyone who does not share their dedication to social justice ideals. Everyone. Liberals. Insufficiently dedicated leftists. Conservatives. Cuckservatives. Cross them, even inadvertently, and they will attempt to destroy you, your career, and your family.

A Minneapolis City Council member is drawing criticism for what some see as an effort to publicly shame constituents who objected to her involvement in Wednesday’s Black Lives Matter rally at the Mall of America and the airport. Council Member Alondra Cano, who represents the Ninth Ward, has been accused of “doxing” — posting personal information about people who criticized her for supporting the Black Lives Matter events — on Twitter.

Those protests shut down movement in and out of the Megamall and also interfered with airport traffic; she’s a City Councilwoman and she’s doxxing those who take the controversial position of preferring the international airport and the state’s largest retail outlet remain open for business.

That is the reality. So, the only question is, are you going to submit or are you going to resist?

In the spirit of the season

George R.R. Martin spares a few kind words for the Sad Puppies:

In the spirit of the season, I am going to say something nice about the Sad Puppies. Last year’s Puppygate was an ugly affair. I am not going to rehash it here. My views are all on record, my original blog posts still up for anyone who wants to go back and read them. The last thing I want… the last thing anyone who truly loves science fiction, fantasy, and fandom would want… would be to have to go through the whole thing again in 2016. Whatever your view of how the Hugo Awards turned out at Sasquan, I think we can all agree that we would like MidAmericon II’s awards to be more joyful, less rancorous, less controversial.

And maybe… just maybe… we’ll get our wish. Call me naive. Call me an innocent. Call me too trusting by half, too nice a guy to see how things really are… but, really, I am starting to have some hope. All over the internet, people are already talking about the Hugo Awards, making recommendations, discussing the work… the WORK, the things we love, the stuff that unites us instead of the stuff that divides us. I’ve been trying to do my part, here on my Not A Blog, and will continue to do so. Over at FILE 770, similar discussions are taking place. And on many other websites, blogs, and bulletin boards as well… including Sad Puppies 4.

Yes, the Sad Puppies are doing it again. ((No big secret, that was announced even before worldcon)). Discussions of possible nominations in all Hugo categories can be found on their SP4 site here: http://sadpuppies4.org/sp4-recommendations-pages-and-faq/ Go check it out. You can even join in. So far as I can tell, you don’t need to be a Puppy to recommend.

As of a few minutes ago, there were 159 ‘thoughts’ in the Best Novel section, which suggests a healthy level of participation. And, I am pleased to say, almost all of what follows seems to be honest and enthusiastic discussion of the work. I am seeing very little name-calling compared to what we saw in Sad Puppies 3, a dearth of references to CHORFS and ASPs and Puppy-kickers and that perennial favorite, SJWs. I am not seeing any “nominate this, it will make their heads explode” posts that we saw so often last year.

Instead, people are recommending books. A very wide range of books. Sure, new works by familiar Puppy favorites like Larry Correia, Mike Williamson, and John C. Wright are being recommended (no surprise there)… but so are works by Neal Stephenson, James S.A. Corey, Naomi Novik, Victor Milan, Terry Pratchett, S.M. Stirling, Ian Tregillis, Ernie Cline, Elizabeth Bear, Gene Wolfe, Michael Moorcock, Orson Scott Card, Greg Bear, Kate Elliott, and many others… including the latest Marko Kloos, and… wonder of wonder… novels from N.K. Jemisin and Anne Leckie!

There are some really good names on that list. Some really good books. (And many I have not read yet, but will look up now). And there’s an amazing range of literary styles, subgenres, and… yes… political and religious views. And all this is to the good.

Is it a Christmas miracle? Has Mr. Martin’s heart grown three sizes? It is an inspiration, is it not?

For my part, I will certainly pledge that when the time comes to make the recommendations for Rabid Puppies 2, there will not be a single reference to CHORFS and ASPS, to Puppykickers, or even to SJWs. There will be no negativity nor will any nominations be urged for the purposes of inspiring rapid cranial expansion; any head-exploding that happens to take place in response to the RP2 recommendations will be entirely unintended on my part.

I trust that all of the responses to those recommendations, by Mr. Martin and others, will be similarly restrained.

When Man forgets his Creator

He forgets how to create. Once you read this, you will know why John C. Wright’s review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the only one I was actually interested in reading. One should not read this being wary of spoilers, but rather of having one’s ability to mindlessly enjoy the cultural detritus of Western decline irretrievably hampered. As always, Mr. Wright cuts to the chase by stating an obvious fact that has nevertheless escaped most of the movie’s critics and fans alike:

How can this movie both at once be a really enjoyable return to a beloved childhood favorite, and be a bland and dull, and in places offensively stupid and politically correct, piece of trash?

Because it is a remake, not a sequel.

Oh, I know that technically it is a sequel, allegedly taking place decades after the close of TEDDY BEARS OF THE JEDI, but the story follows the same plotline, except that the roles of Han, Luke and Leia are all played by Junkyard Girl, since she is the cynical rogue, the innocent novice, and the girl with the McGuffin needing rescue all at once. Except she escapes on her own. The rollerball robot is not as cute and sassy as R2D2, because he is not given as much to do, and the Exhenchman and the Ace Pilot don’t actually do all that much.

There is a way cool scene when the X-wings come screaming across the lake to the rescue. The hollow star-eating weapon-planet with forests and snowy mountains and atmosphere above its hull was a convincingly impressive weapon, but, again, there was no moment where the impressiveness was played up, no moment when someone whispered, that’s no moon…

So it is a fairly good remake as remakes go, and it does what it sets out to do, and recapture some, or almost some, of the energy, cleverness, craft, excitement and innocence of the original.

So why is this not the review I wanted to write, with me dancing jigs on the steeple, painted with woad with bells on my toes, yodeling for joy? Because the jerkwads of Hollywood had to take a favorite movie and crap it up with political correctness. Because this film is critic-proof. No matter how bad it is, everyone and his brother will go see it.

And the political correctness is subtle. It has to be subtle, because if the poison tasted of poison, the victim would spit it out: so it is sugar coated to go down easy. Do you think controlling the myths and dreams of a generation has no effect on the generation? Story tellers are the secret legislators of mankind.

The scene where Luke tosses his lightsaber away rather than using it in righteous wrath to smite the evil Emperor may have only been a scene in a kid’s space opera flick: but the majority of the American public regards exactly that same maneuver, preemptive self-disarmament,  as the only moral and right thing to do in the face of the appalling evils of our present war, a war they dare not admit exist, lest they feel a split second of anger, and like a lightswitch being flipped, turn entirely evil themselves. That is what they think will happen if we fight back. If you smite a Sith, you become a Sith.

Why can’t the modern Leftist tell a decent story? Even when he is copying a good and healthy-minded original scene by scene in a paint-by-numbers fashion, it turns out sick-minded.

The answer is ultimately where all ultimate answers reside, in the deep places of the soul.

When we forget God, we forget how to tell tales. I submit that when a man forgets his Creator, he forgets how to create.

It is rather remarkable, when you think about it. Abrams is no different than Brooks is no different than Scalzi. They are not only “creators” who cannot create, they are parasites who, regardless of their technical skills, cannot even successfully execute a paint-by-the-numbers imitation. Like a colorblind painter, their moral blindness renders them fundamentally incapable of utilizing a full moral palette.

This is, I think, the best realistic outcome for Star Wars fans, and one that is pretty close to what I assumed would be the case. Abrams is a technically competent remaker, and he was never likely to resist the conventional SJWisms. Better a competent and mildly poisonous remake than an incompetent or virulently poisonous one, but all the same, it is a remake, not a genuinely new story.

For that, you’ll have to turn to the Expanded Universe, or, later next year, to an entirely different science fiction universe entitled Faraway Wars: Embers of Empire.

Merry Christmas….

No submission

No king but Jesus. John C. Wright reminds Christians who they serve and celebrate this Christmas Eve:

The time for submission is past.

Christians have been slandered, libeled, demeaned, and buffaloed by a very small and very patient group of Leftwing zealots who have somehow convinced the world that there is no place for us in the this world: no place for our nativity scenes at Christmas, no place for Christian marriage, no place for the Ten Commandment in our courthouse decorations, no place for historical accuracy, reality or truth in our lives, and no prayers in our schools.

Enough is enough. We outnumber them. It is time to drive them from our midst, and return our civilization to being civilized.

Let us be Christendom again.

A Merry Christmas Eve to you all. The night is dark and we find ourselves in a time of war. And yet, we remain joyful and thankful.

I love Christmas Eve, the midnight masses, the candlelight services, the cheerful Christmas greetings, and the certain knowledge that all around the world, the vast network of believers reaches into every darkness and shadow.

But whether the season’s greeting is said openly with a smile or whispered surreptitiously under threat of death and torture, the Christmas message of hope in a fallen world remains the same.

The graveyard of empires strikes again

How, exactly, is this failure to win in Afghanistan even remotely surprising, considering the past failures of the British and Soviet empires there?

Taliban outlast 14 years of U.S. combat in Afghanistan

The sudden killings of six American service members on a foot patrol by a suicide bomber this week is a graphic message back home that the Taliban are durable, able to launch a number of coordinated attacks in recent months across Afghanistan 14 years after the U.S. invasion.

A Pentagon report calls the security situation “fragile” and writes of the Taliban’s “resilience throughout the second half of the year.”

Perhaps they are unaware of our superior technology? Or perhaps we simply aren’t trying hard enough. Here is the thing. If you can’t win in nearly four times the amount of time it took to force both Japan and Nazi Germany to surrender, you can’t win, period.

So stop already. Declare victory if you must, even if no one will believe it. But stop!

You don’t say

Chaos Horizon provides additional evidence of how the SF-SJWs guide their bloc vote:

A few weeks ago, the 2015 Tor.com Reviewers’ Choice list came out. Over the past several years, this has been an important list to track for several reasons. First, it gathers recommendations from 11 Tor.com critics, making it a collated list of its own. Second, it has been fairly well synced up to the Hugos and Nebulas, at least before the campaigning of last year. In 2013, they recommended Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice three times; it swept the Hugo and Nebula. Last year, Goblin Emperor was recommended 3 times; it scores Hugo and Nebula noms and that could very well have won the Hugo if not for the Puppies.

Tor Books has been an award-chasing publisher for decades. That fact that the Puppies have risen up to stop them from dominating the awards every year is why they changed the rules with E Pluribus Hugo. Patrick Nielsen Hayden and his little coterie calculated that as long as they can guarantee themselves a single nomination per category, they can muster enough muscle to win at the final round.

What Puppykickers quite willfully fail to understand is that in 2015, the Puppies, even the Rabid Puppies, engaged in less bloc-voting, in percentage terms, in 2015 than the SJWs did. In the past, the Tor-led SJWs didn’t need to publish public lists because it was all a whisper campaign among a few dozen people; you could see references to it in every “I haven’t read X yet, but I’m voting for it because I hear….” statement. You could also see the Nebula logrolling take place in the SFWA NAR every year, until it was hidden from the public; to Cat Rambo’s credit, she has apparently made public what, if I recall correctly, John Scalzi was responsible for hiding.

Table 1: Correlation Between Top 6 (and Ties) of the 2014 Nebula Suggested Reading List and the Eventual 2014 Nebula Nominees

Novel: 4 out of 6, 67.7%
Novella: 6 out of 6, 100%
Novelette: 5 out of 6, 83.3%
Short Story: 6 out of 7, 85.7%

Total: 21/25, 84%

The Tor.com Reviewers’ Choice has reinforced, and to a certain extent supplanted, the Tor whispering campaign; based on the way in which reviewers tend to chase the crowd, we can anticipate that the novels the SJWs will be pushing for the award season include:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Ancillary Mercy by Anne Leckie (Orbit)
Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

It’s all women, as one would expect, but surprisingly light on Tor-published books. One would assume the fifth book would be The Dark Forest, the sequel to The Three Body Problem, but there is very, very little SJW buzz about it. Perhaps the SJWs finally figured out that Cixin Liu is a man. Or perhaps it is perceived to have been tainted by the Puppies playing kingmaker last year. Who knows? These are not rational people.

We now also know why John Scalzi very publicly counted himself out in 2015; unlike last year, he is aware that neither Tor nor the SJWs are pushing his latest mediocrity for any awards. No doubt he’s waiting for EPH, when Tor can again guarantee him a spot to make up for his declining popular support.

Now let’s go and see what the top novels are in the 2015 SFWA Suggested Reading List. And note that I did not see these until AFTER reaching my conclusions based on the Tor.com reviewers’ choices.

21     Uprooted     Novik, Naomi     Del Rey
17     The Grace of Kings     Liu, Ken     Saga Press 
16     Karen Memory     Bear, Elizabeth     Tor Books
15     Updraft     Wilde, Fran     Tor Books   
14     The Traitor Baru Cormorant   Dickinson, Seth  Tor Books
12     Ancillary Mercy     Leckie, Ann     Orbit
11     The Fifth Season     Jemisin, N. K.     Orbit   

Interesting, is it not? All four novels identified are there. After looking into the three previously unmentioned novels, I think it’s likely that Seth Dickenson’s debut novel will turn out to be the book that Tor is pushing in 2015. They badly need a new star now that Scalzi is running out of steam and they lost the HALO books; based on this review, Dickenson certainly appears to understand the Tor Game: “While I enjoyed The Traitor Baru Cormorant, and will read the second
book in the series when it arrives, I felt at times I was being giving a
sociology lecture by someone steeped in women’s and LBGT studies and
political economy.”

Seth Dickinson, we are told, “is the author of THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT and more than
a dozen short stories. During his time in the social sciences, he
worked on cocoa farming in Ghana, political rumor control, and
simulations built to study racial bias in police shootings. He wrote
much of the lore and flavor for Bungie Studios’ smash hit DESTINY. If he
were an animal, he would be a cockatoo.”

Yeah, about that… “Destiny’s initial release was met with a chorus of ‘meh’.  It
wasn’t a bad game, but it was hampered by a damp squib of a main
storyline.”

In any event, Mr. Dickenson sounds like an ideal standard bearer for Tor Books for the next few years. Regardless, I won’t be reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant, because BOYCOTT TOR BOOKS.

The true lesson of Star Wars

Markku helpfully summarizes the Star Wars Saga:

The plot so far:
-Empire builds a Death Star
-Empire builds a bigger Death Star
And now… Wait for it…
-Empire builds EVEN bigger Death Star

And
the movie knows how silly this is. When the rebels hear, they basically
go “Oh come on, not this shit again? *sigh* Ooooh-kay. Where’s the
shield generators? There. Where’s the weak spot? There. Ok, guys, let’s
go blow this up.

Now, it’s really nice that the movie is
forthright about how much the central plot element sucks, but I wonder
if the alternative occurred to anyone, to make it NOT suck and not have
to apologize for it.

That’s the real weakness of the movie.

The third one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one will stay up! And that’s the true lesson of Star Wars, kids, just keep building bigger and better Death Stars until one finally survives the arduous construction and beta testing process and you rule the galaxy.

Reliable in what regard?

Jonathan Haidt considers whether an entirely biased social science is capable of reliability:

Truth is a process, not just an end-state. The Righteous Mind was about the obstacles to that process — confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, tribalism, and the worship of sacred values. Given the many ways that our moral psychology warps our reasoning, it’s a wonder we’ve gotten as far as we have, as a species. That’s what’s so brilliant about science: it is a way of putting people together so that they challenge each other and cancel out each others’ confirmation biases and tribal commitments. The truth emerges from the interaction of flawed individuals.

But something alarming has happened to the academy since the 1990s: it has been transformed from an institution that leans to the left, which is not a big problem, into an institution that is entirely on the left, which is a very big problem.

Nowadays there are NO conservatives or libertarians in most academic departments in the humanities and social sciences. The academy has been so focused on attaining diversity by race and gender (which are valuable) that it has created a hostile climate for people who think differently. The American Academy has become a politically orthodox and quasi-religious institution. When everyone shares the same politics and prejudices, the disconfirmation process breaks down. Political orthodoxy is particularly dangerous for the social sciences, which grapple with so many controversial topics (such as race, racism, gender, poverty, immigration, politics, and climate science). America needs innovative and trustworthy research on all these topics, but can a social science that lacks viewpoint diversity produce reliable findings?

Based on the evidence, the answer is yes, as a social science that lacks viewpoint diversity produces findings that are reliably insane. At this point, the term “social science” has become an oxymoron akin to “military intelligence” or “new Star Wars movie”.