Back From the Dead

Helton Strom is just a guy between contracts when he runs afoul of both planetary officialdom
and space pirates. He is left with nothing but the clothes on his back,
and not even a citizenship to his name. Is the ancient, broken-down
military-surplus starship and the young lady living aboard it the key to
a bright future, or will his repairs and new mercenary friends awaken
the demons lurking in the ship’s murky and lethal past?

THE STARS CAME BACK: BACK FROM THE DEAD is part space-western, the
story of folks just trying stay alive, seeking work to earn money for
repairs to get to the next job, with no shortage of action and adventure
along the way. It is military sci-fi, featuring a company of
mercenaries, spaceship combat, mortar and rifle combat, spear-and-shield
battle, and post-traumatic stress disorder. And it is a philosophical
investigation, pondering everything from the lessons of Achilles to how
one stops a bar fight with earplugs.

BACK FROM THE DEAD is the prose rewrite of the first half of the screenplay-format version of the original THE STARS CAME BACK. Today and tomorrow we are making it available for only $1.99 for anyone who previously purchased the screenplay-format version but would like to read the prose version as well. It is available in both EPUB and Kindle formats. 235 pages, DRM-free.

Beginning Wednesday, it will be available for $4.99 from Amazon.

The moral imperative of foreign intervention

Be sure to bring this military policy up the next time someone is telling you that there is a moral imperative demanding U.S. military intervention abroad:

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally “boy play,” and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records.

The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages — and doing little when they began abusing children.

“The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,” said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. “But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did — that was something village elders voiced to me.”

The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it.

It’s also worth noting that 6.6 percent of the EU asylum seekers come from Afghanistan. It should be obvious that not only is there NO moral imperative to provide anyone from that society with any refuge whatsoever, the moral imperative is to keep them out of every society that can be considered even remotely civilized.

Mount Gamergate

I’m pleased to announce that every Monday, we’ll be running a regular political cartoon created by Red Meat and me. As for the inaugural cartoon, one could probably suggest 10 or 15 other GGers who belong on Mount Gamergate; the thought of there one day being a giant, topless tribute to Mercedes Carrera is certainly amusing. But for me, when I think of #GamerGate, these are the five individuals who first come to mind.

And, of course, if you’d like to see more of our collaborative efforts, you can find them in SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police.

The idea with these graphic memes is to pass them around. They have been a very effective tactic for #GamerGate because they are one-way communication in pure rhetoric. So, if you’re on Twitter or other social media, I would encourage you to do so.

Rise of the ultras

The result of the recent Greek parliamentary election is in line with my prediction of the European ultra-nationalists coming to power in two election cycles.

Golden Dawn, one of Europe’s most violent far-right parties, has emerged as one of the biggest winners of Sunday’s general election in Greece, consolidating its presence in parliament and power on the streets. The neo-fascist group came in third with 7% of the vote, behind the triumphant leftwing Syriza and conservative New Democracy….

“Golden Dawn is a movement of power, it is not a protest movement any
more,” the party’s Swastika- tattooed spokesman, Ilias Kasidiaris, told
Star TV as it became clear that the extremists had retained their
position as the country’s third biggest political force. “Golden Dawn is
the only party seeing an increase in its percentage. In October when
Greeks begin to experience the consequences of the memorandum and
illegal immigration you will see our support increase radically,” said
the former marine, berating the country’s mainstream media for
boycotting the party.

With 18 MPs in the 300-seat house, around 500,000 Greeks cast ballots
in favour of Golden Dawn. The organisation performed especially well in
Attica, the greater Athens region and the Aegean islands of Lesbos and
Kos where voter support doubled. Both islands have been overwhelmed in
recent months by thousands of refugees and migrants fleeing conflict and
poverty.

Golden Dawn’s anti-immigrant stance at a time of mounting fears over
Greece’s frontline role in Europe’s biggest humanitarian crisis in
recent history, almost certainly helped. The party, portraying itself as
the “only nationalist choice” played heavily on fears that Greeks could
soon become a minority in their own country. But, so too, did its
shrill opposition to the internationally sponsored bailout accords, or
memoranda, that the extremists have said amount to “ethnocide” or death
of the nation. Polls showed that some 16.6% of those who voted for
Golden Dawn were victims of record levels of unemployment – the most
grievous side-effect of massive budget cuts and lay-offs enforced as the
price of being bailed out to the tune of €326bn creditors in the EU and
International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“In terms of absolute numbers Golden Dawn was the only party to hold
its ground,” said Aristides Hatzis, political commentator and Athens
University professor.

The Fascists and the National Socialists came to power in the 1930s because they were the most credible options available to the Italian and German publics at the time. Don’t confuse the beginnings with the ends; 1933 was not 1941 or even 1939. Fascists were not elected with the idea that they would throw in with German imperialism (it is usually forgotten that Mussolini was an ally of France and Great Britain and only threw in with Germany after Great Britain betrayed Italian interests), and the National Socialists were not elected because they promised they would invade the Soviet Union, slaughter the Jews in Eastern Europe, and get Germany into a war with the USA.

One can’t learn anything useful about the future prospects of revolutionary parties by what other revolutionary parties did AFTER they came to power, one can only learn about their prospects by looking at what the other parties were doing BEFORE they came to power.

The worst thing about the established anti-nationalist European parties is that they have failed so spectacularly that even the violently murderous anti-immigrant parties will be preferred to them by even the most sane and civilized elements of the electorate. In a time of invasion, it doesn’t matter how dangerous the only party willing to defend you might be, what matters is that they are the only ones willing to defend you, your family, and your children.

As for those who are historically ignorant enough to point out that Golden Dawn only won 18 seats in the Greek parliament with 7 percent of the vote and therefore will never come to power, I will type very, very slowly and point out that in 1928, five years before they took power, the National Socialist Workers Party won 12 seats in the German parliament with 2.6 percent of the vote.

Two election cycles. And then you will see an absolute sea change in Europe. And if the EU attempts to entirely abandon even the pretense of democracy in defense of the invasion, the change will come even faster. And harder.

Vox and the Fat Man

The great Cuck Defender Charlie Martin has been proving that he doesn’t care for two days now. A brief selection:

Charlie Martin
He’s made a bald assertion to which he himself is a counter-example.  It’s vacuous.

Charlie Martin
Vox has made the point that he’s  Italian now. Somehow his “race” hasn’t stopped adopting a new culture

Charlie Martin
As with his assertion that I don’t speak German. I answered in my “native” dialect of German.

Charlie Martin
And when he realizes he’s made a fool of himself he tries to change the subject.

Charlie Martin
And like a lot of “deep thinkers”, when caught out, he gets pissy.

Charlie Martin
So he veered to “fatty” — which hurt my feeling when I was six, not so much at 60.

Charlie Martin
Like a lot of other Great Men, he’s a childish bully and a shallow, petulant little man.

Charlie Martin
like a lot of other Great Men, he’s gotten a collection of sycophants who prefer following to thinking.

Charlie Martin
But as Trump, Obama, Sanders, and a million others have demonstrated, followers don’t make you smart.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
I’m sure if you just tweet 30 more times, you’ll convince everyone you don’t care, El Chubbo.

Charlie Martin
You’re a small little man whose major recent accomplishment was stealing someone else’s idea.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
So the Doritos didn’t do the trick? Perhaps you should try pizza, Chubbawumba.

Charlie Martin ‏@chasrmartin
And you still can’t get beyond middle school taunts.

Vox Day
That is all your butthurt rhetoric merits. I want you to be able to comprehend them, after all.

The trick is to leave them to it once they’re triggered. You don’t want to overdo it; that’s just sadistic. Just step in every now and then and give them a little slap to keep them spinning. Like all Gammas, El Chubbo has been looking for an opportunity to “get even” since the last time he was publicly slapped down, which is why he jumped in to white knight David French, but he’s too caught up in his delusion bubble to grasp how far over his head he’s found himself.

The revelation here is that Charlie Martin has apparently been prone to having weight problems as long as he can remember. That’s the psych tell that explains his otherwise overly defensive behavior. And sure, while it makes perfect logical sense that a petty taunt about his weight should bother him less at 60 than at 6, the emotional reality is that it bothers him more. That’s why it triggered him for two straight days.

The reason is that after all this time, after all these years, after all his various adult accomplishments and efforts, he’s still dismissed as the little fat boy. It’s not actually my taunts that cause the emotional pain that set him off, it’s the memories of past pain that they induce in him. That’s why they’re called “triggers”.

It’s also why Gammas find their attempts to trigger me so futile. Notice how their attempts are always all over the place; they are searching, in vain, for something that hurts. Perhaps because they can’t identify with jocks, they never seem to grasp the psychological implication of my not only having been smart as a child, but an elite athlete as well. I’m not saying that I don’t have emotional triggers because we all do. It’s just that mine have absolutely nothing to do with the average intelligent individual’s.

I may have to reconsider women’s sports

Sure, they don’t grasp either sportsmanship or emotional continence, but that doesn’t mean they don’t offer considerable entertainment in their own right:

By the side of the green, Hull could clearly be seen walking towards the next tee in a gesture that golfers the world over will recognize as the tacit concession of a tiny putt. Lee duly scooped her ball up, only to be met by Pettersen’s fiery insistence that no such concession had been made. ‘Europe one up,’ declared the referee, who had no choice but to apply the dictum: rules are rules.

Cue pandemonium. Down the 18th hole the European coterie of captains and assistant captains debated what had happened. Surely one of them could see it drove a coach and horses through the idea that the spirit of the game is a vital part of the integrity of these matches?

Under the rules they had the opportunity to offer a concession of the final hole and make things right. It cried out for strong leadership – or just common sporting decency, for that matter – but sadly none was forthcoming from the captain, Carin Koch.

It says everything about the grotesqueness of it all that Hull had taken her record to four wins out of four – and yet still ended the match in floods of tears.

Awesome. Frankly, I think women’s sports would be a lot more popular if they stopped trying to imitate the men and just embraced the full extent of cattiness and head games that women are capable of bringing to intra-sexual relations.

This will serve as your NFL open thread.

Never apologize to SJWs

Or to the media, as both Donald Trump and Ann Coulter, among others, have repeatedly demonstrated:

Appearing with Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show, Donald Trump was in the mood to tweak his own persona — to a point. “I think apologizing’s a great thing,” he said. “But you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize, sometime in the hopefully distant future, if I’m ever wrong.”

It’s funny because it’s true: Trump’s steadfast refusal to apologize for his controversial antics may be the most striking thing about him. A significant portion of the Republican base craves it, and a handful of pro-Trump conservative pundits does, too. None of them looms larger, perhaps, than Ann Coulter.

It makes sense. Trump has given political expression to a model of conservative discourse perfected by Coulter and subsequently emulated by Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Michael Savage, and others: 1) Say something controversial or provocative and get a ton of attention in the process. 2) When the media and the Left inevitably demand an apology, adamantly refuse to provide one, driving your critics batty and burnishing your conservative credentials with the base. It’s been Coulter’s modus operandi for her entire, lucrative career, and now Trump has brought it to the campaign trail: A real conservative never says he’s sorry….

Coulter has made a fine living with the same mantra for decades. “Never apologize, at least not for what liberals want you to apologize for,” she advised in her 2004 book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). It’s a rule her critics know she follows all-too-well.

During the George W. Bush years, Coulter’s use of the terms “raghead” and “faggot” in speeches at CPAC generated some furious reactions but no public contrition. In 2012, the Today Show spotlighted a father who was demanding that she apologize for using the term “retarded,” and cease using it in the future. She insisted she wasn’t really referring to the mentally handicapped and said, “screw them!” when asked about her critics in a radio interview with Alan Colmes. (As recently as this May, Coulter wrote a column entitled, “Knowing What We Know Now, Would You Say Jeb Bush Is Retarded?”) Later that year, a Latino GOP group demanded she apologize for a column entitled, “America Nears el Tipping Pointo.” She declined to do so.

Coulter’s remarks have attracted the ire of bigger fish on the right, as well. A few months ago, Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren called on her to apologize for saying that South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who is of Indian Sikh heritage, “is an immigrant and does not understand America’s history.” No such apology was forthcoming.

What I find remarkable is the way that despite the clear and conclusive evidence that a public apology always does more harm than good, people are STILL dumb enough to offer up public apologies. Matt Damon is only the latest to learn this very simple and obvious fact; Brad Torgersen learned the same thing when he made the mistake of apologizing to John Scalzi. As will not surprise anyone who has read SJWs Always Lie, Scalzi immediately took Brad’s apology and turned it into a weapon he used to launch an attack on the Sad Puppy leader.

Look at it this way. An apology is a confession. And what do prosecutors do with confessions? They use it to prosecute the person who gave it to them. 

If you’re ever being put under pressure to apologize for something, ask yourself this question: What are the real objectives of those who are putting pressure on me? If they happen to be your critics or political opponents, you can be confident their real objectives don’t happen to include your best interests.

The schizo is back

As some of you know, I have some high-level contacts at certain technology companies. It occurred to me that this is a good opportunity to convince them that some changes need to be made to their comment system, so for the time being I’ve removed the Name/URL and Anonymous commenting options. This means you will have to be registered in order to comment. We may eventually go to a system where you will have to be a member of the blog in order to have commenting privileges.

The advantage of this is that trolls and schizos will no longer be able to pretend to be other commenters. My hope is that I will be able to take the evidence and convince Google to make some of the changes I have been recommending to them that will permit us to go back to a more open commenting system, albeit one that gives the moderators more precise and targeted moderation abilities.

Conversation with a cucky

Charles Martin leaps to the defense of David French. A moderate amount of amusement ensues:

Vox Day
.@JonahNRO @DavidAFrench The fact that you think you can defend a culture WITHOUT defending a race is what makes you #cuckservative.
24 retweets 46 favorites

Charlie Martin
@voxday @JonahNRO @DavidAFrench the fact that you think that is what makes you an unlikable dolt.

Vox Day
So you say. And yet, I’m smarter and more popular than you are. And on this issue, I’m also correct.

Charlie Martin ‏@chasrmartin
I might buy more popular.

Vox Day
I have lived in Japan, the USA, and Italy. I have learned the languages. Culture is NOT geography.

Charlie Martin
What *is* American culture? “We hold these truths to be self-evident….” That’s not a race.

Vox Day
It’s English. The Rights of Englishmen. They believed it was universal. No one else did. Or does.

Vox Day
That’s like observing bushido is not a race. That’s true, it is the cultural belief of a race.

Charlie Martin
Which is why so many Americans then spoke German. And you wonder why I think you’re a dolt.

Vox Day
You’re historically illiterate. A smaller percentage spoke German then than speak Spanish now.

Charlie Martin
Now, if all Pekinese are dogs, are all dogs Pekinese?

Vox Day
No, but moving a Pekinese to Germany will not make it a German Shepherd. Or a good guard dog.

Charlie Martin
And, unlike you, I’m not overcompensating for my fears about my intellectual achievements.

Vox Day
No, clearly not. You are a modest man with much to be modest about. What causes your overeating?

It’s always funny when the guy trying to strike the superior pose reveals that his level of historical knowledge doesn’t rise to the level of Snopes. It’s not hard to understand why they stick to rhetoric. Dialectic, even in 140-character chunks, is obviously beyond them.

It’s also informative, because it demonstrates that one doesn’t have to be an SJW to be prone to utilizing SJW-style tactics and rhetoric. The “conservative” version is observably more prone to using pseudo-dialectic, but it’s rhetoric all the same.

And just to be clear, less than 10 percent of the U.S. population ever spoke German; one-third of Pennsylvanians did at its linguistic peak. Spanish speakers now make up about 16 percent of the U.S. population.

Cucky doesn’t like “cuckservative”

David French, a National Review writer who really, really, really wants you to know that HE HAS AN ADOPTED BLACK SONDAUGHTER, doesn’t think the “cuckservative” term should be used. Because, ah, well, it helps the far Left?

I understand frustration at political correctness. In fact, I’ve done something about it, filing more lawsuits to protect students and professors from campus PC tyranny than perhaps any other lawyer in the United States. I agree with the incredulity and rage at elites’ unwillingness to secure the border and their insistence that every immigration debate has to be racialized, with conservatives constantly accused of bigotry. In their frustration, I’ve even seen conservatives I call friends deride those they deem insufficiently devoted to the cause as “cucks” and “cuckservatives.”

In addition to being a derogatory, insulting slur, the word provides aid and comfort to the trolls whose tweets I’ve posted above. Just as bad, it enables and feeds the Left’s own engine of racial grievance.

Conservatives should reject those on both extremes of the spectrum. We defend a culture, not a race. The foundation of that culture is a faith that makes no distinction among races but rather declares, unequivocally, “All are one, in Christ Jesus.” Shunning the slur disempowers the trolls and forces the radical Left to confront the race hatred that fuels its own rage.

Look, this isn’t that difficult. Now that whites are no longer an overwhelming majority in America, they have to play the same racial politics game that everyone else in every other heterogeneous country has had to play for centuries. It’s not an accident that people like David French and Jonah Goldberg, decent conservatives who genuinely subscribe to the now-outmoded abstract ideals that the Left rejected in the Sixties, haven’t grasped the fact that the demographic changes to the United States have not only changed the way the political game is played, but have changed the game itself.

It’s rather amusing to see French attempt to play the Christian card in the secular context of U.S. politics. Yes, all are one in Christ Jesus, does that mean French supports expelling all non-Christians from the USA? If not, then what is the relevance of spiritual equality among Christians to the culture in which white Americans would prefer to live?

Diversity+Proximity=War. What used to be, and what French still believes is, virtue-signaling, in a mostly homogeneous white majority culture is now increasingly despised in a much more heterogeneous culture. What was praised 20 years ago may well get people killed 20 years from now. Just look at how the culture of Rhodesia has changed as a direct result of the changing racial demographics. Cuckies don’t understand that non-whites have never played by white rules except when forced to do so, and they never will do so by choice.

What is feeding the Left’s engine of racial grievance is the increasing size and number of competing racial identities. Trying to play the now-irrelevant “colorblind” game is as pointless as playing by touch-football rules in the NFL.

While it is true that race is not culture, neither are the two distinct concepts entirely unrelated. And culture certainly is much more intertwined with race than it is with geography; it’s more than a little ironic that those who claim race has nothing to do with culture also assert their belief in the culturally transformative qualities of magic dirt.

Moreover, the idea that it is the Alt-Right that is somehow feeding the Left is ridiculous, when the cuckservatives are attacking the same people, using the same tactics and terms, that the Left does. We all know why self-styled conservatives hate being called cuckservatives. It’s because the term strikes too close to home and cuts too deep.

It’s not the word “cuckservative” that has to go. It’s National Review cuckservatism. Isn’t 60 years of unmitigated failure enough to conclude that it isn’t working?