Mailvox: constructing Xanatos

NH asks about setting up a Xanatos Gambit:

With some of your recent posts, I realized before you had pointed it out you were forcing the SJWs to make a choice, one that could lead to them nuking their own awards. The moment I realized this, I thought, that bastard! What a genius! It was simple, yet I wouldn’t have thought of it.

Recently, I had been considering similar ideas… all roads leading your enemy to defeat, as you quoted. Yet I struggle to see those moves because those moves can be so deceptive in their simplicity, so hidden in plain view.

How did you get better over time at seeing those strategic moves? I’m not a stupid guy, but I’m looking for mental exercises if you will. What is the difference between being Machiavellian (which I score high in on tests) and being manipulative?

The difference between being Machiavellian and being manipulative is little more than the amount of foresight involved. Those who are manipulative are usually reactive, their goals are short term, and they often contradict themselves and get in their own way. Those who are Machiavellian usually have a long term goal in mind and their every move is designed to move them closer to that objective. There are two famous military dictums that I like to keep in mind at all times, the former credited to Sun Tzu, the latter to Napoleon.

  • If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
  • When your enemy is executing a false movement, never interrupt him.

The reason you must know yourself is so that you can know your strong points, your weak points, and your capabilities. Few battles are won through overwhelming strength, they are won by breaking the enemy’s weak points before he can break your strong points. The reason you must know your enemy is so you can know his strong points to avoid them, his weak points to target them, and his capabilities so you can defend yourself against them.

[NB: This is why I HATE the term schwerpunkt in military theory, because it is an offensive term meaning focal point of effort, not a defensive term indicating a hardened resistance point as would make more sense in the above context.]

Where win-win situations, or Xanatos Gambits, are created is by taking advantage of the enemy’s illusions. Informational friction is absolutely key, and in situations like the present struggle for the Hugo Awards, it is compounded by people seeing what they want to see. So, applying Sun Tzu, you must first do two things:

  • Ensure that you are seeing an accurate picture of yourself and your enemy.
  • Identify what their illusions are concerning themselves and you.

Then present them with options where they will predictably react by choosing the one that works to your advantage. Soon enough, they will find themselves in a position where they are choosing between options that are equally beneficial to you. More or less. In some cases, you may well find that you don’t even care which option they choose.

Let me give an actual example of what underlay the Hugo situation. The SJWs in science fiction are constantly making ridiculously stupid mistakes because they violate Sun Tzu’s dictum by a) wrongly believing themselves to be more influential than they are and b) wrongly considering me and the Sad Puppies to be less influential than we are. The former is not their fault; John Scalzi has relentlessly misled them for years. “The biggest blog in SF” that they had on their side was literally 15 percent of the size they were told it was and erroneously believed it to be in August 2010. And yet, even 18 months after being exposed, there are still some SJWs who will tell you in all seriousness that Scalzi is “huge”.

Blame for the latter, on the other hand, is entirely theirs As recently as last year, there were SJWs who quite literally believed this:

My website averages well over 600 visits a day. Based on comments from other fanzine people, I’m guessing that’s more readers than VD’s blog would get even when he provokes a shit storm. Let’s deprive him of the traffic.

At the time she posted that, the site traffic was 46,456 Google pageviews per day. Yesterday it was 68,539. Last month’s average was 51,068. The ludicrous aspect of this is that the Sitemeter widget has always been publicly available, and though it’s considerably stingier than Google or WordPress, about ten seconds of research would have provided whatever ratio is required to compare apples to apples.

The immediate consequence is that the other side imagines that the Dread Ilk cannot possibly account for the numbers that are overwhelming their core strength. Ergo #GamerGate must be involved and a whole host of other delusions that the rational observer knows are not even possible, thereby leading to a series of mistakes that will likely lead to the very situation they erroneously believe is already taking place. And their failure to know their enemy means they do not know what our objectives are, so they never know if their attempts to counter our actions are thwarting us or playing into our hands.

These two comments by Alexander are apt:

  • So how long until the rabbits put 2 and 2 together and realize that they have waaaaaaaay more than just 300 sad puppies to deal with. The voters were the tip of the spear, we are now seeing the obvious signs that we have magnitudes of support behind us.
  • They’ve already gotten Breitbart, Instapundit, Twitchy, Ace, and Gamergate involved. At this rate, Finland will have declared war on SJWs by Friday.

By the time they do recalibrate their thinking, it will be far too late. It is already too late, which is why I don’t mind spelling it out. As for how I learned to see these things, part of it is a natural propensity for pattern recognition, part of it is playing a lot of wargames like Advanced Squad Leader. Nothing teaches harsh lessons in actions and consequences, or demonstrates the importance of accurate information, like wargaming.

The most important thing is this: do not underestimate your enemy or ignore his strengths out of a foolish desire to believe yourself his superior. If you want to learn more about this sort of strategic thinking, I very highly recommend reading Martin van Creveld’s A History of Strategy: From Sun Tzu to William S. Lind, which Castalia House just published last month.

Of course, sometimes it is very hard to take your enemy seriously when they are dumb enough to do things like post this caption:

Annie Bellet, one of the writers on the nominees list who was not included in the Sad Puppies or Rabbid Puppies campaign.

“Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet, The Apocalypse Triptych in fact appears on both the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies lists of recommendations.

Entertainment Weekly libels Sad Puppies

I suspect Isbella Biedenharn is going to be hearing from her superiors shortly:

Hugo Award nominations fall victim to misogynistic, racist voting campaign
by Isabella Biedenharn

The Hugo Awards have fallen victim to a campaign in which misogynist groups lobbied to nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards. These groups, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies (both of which are affiliated with last year’s GamerGate scandal), urged sci-fi fans to become members of the Hugo Awards’ voting body, World Science Fiction Convention, in order to cast votes against female writers and writers of color. Membership only costs $40, and allows members to vote for the 2016 nominations as well as the 2015 nominations, which were just released.

Sad Puppies broadcast their selection on Feb. 1, writing: “If you agree with our slate below—and we suspect you might—this is YOUR chance to make sure YOUR voice is heard.” Brad Torgerson, who runs Sad Puppies along with Larry Correia, complains that the Hugo Awards have lately skewed toward “literary” works, as opposed to “entertainment.”

Torgerson also writes that he disagrees with Hugos being awarded for affirmative action-like purposes, as many women and writers of color went home with awards in 2014: ”Likewise, we’ve seen the Hugo voting skew ideological, as Worldcon and fandom alike have tended to use the Hugos as an affirmative action award: giving Hugos because a writer or artist is (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) or because a given work features (insert underrepresented minority or victim group here) characters.”

The other lobbying group, Rabid Puppies, is run by Theodore Beale (who goes by the name Vox Day). As The Telegraph reports, “Members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have called for Beale’s exclusion from the group after he has written against women’s suffrage and posted racist views towards black writer NK Jemisin.”

Fortunately, some sane voters allowed well-deserving writers to pull through. Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Sword and Listen was nominated for Dramatic Presentation, and Annie Bellet’s Goodnight Stars was nominated, despite having a non-white, female protagonist.

Plenty of members of the science fiction community have voiced their disgust with both sects of “Puppies.” Writer Philip Sandifer wrote on his blog Sunday, “The Hugo Awards have just been successfully hijacked by neofascists.” Sandifer’s post, which is worth reading in full, addresses what this disaster means for the sci-fi world:

    To be frank, it means that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom does not have any legitimacy right now. Period. A community that can be this effectively controlled by someone who thinks black people are subhuman and who has called for acid attacks on feminists is not one whose awards have any sort of cultural validity. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to functional communities. And the fact that it has just happened to the oldest and most venerable award in the sci-fi/fantasy community makes it unambiguously clear that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom is not fit for purpose.

As writer Joe Abercrombie put it:

    The Hugo Awards have never looked less like the future of anything.

    — Joe Abercrombie (@LordGrimdark) April 4, 2015

It should be amusing to see the back-pedaling from this malicious hit piece. It’s like they have one tactic: call the media and lie. How fortunate that #GamerGate has demonstrated the complete impotence of the tactic.

UPDATE: They’re scrubbing the article and title, but Daddy Warpig provides the archived original.

CORRECTION: After misinterpreting reports in other news
publications, EW published an unfair and inaccurate depiction of the Sad
Puppies voting slate, which does, in fact, include many women and
writers of color. As Sad Puppies’ Brad Torgerson explained to EW, the
slate includes both women and non-caucasian writers, including Rajnar
Vajra, Larry Correia, Annie Bellet, Kary English, Toni Weisskopf, Ann
Sowards, Megan Gray, Sheila Gilbert, Jennifer Brozek, Cedar Sanderson,
and Amanda Green.
This story has been updated to more accurately reflect this. EW regrets the error.

They left out the only Native American. WHY DO THEY HATE INDIANS?

The crime of failing to cower

This sounds like sheer comedy in the academic thought gulag:

Members of the Virginia Tech football team have been accused of acting disrespectfully at a campus sexual assault awareness event. Players were required to attend a Take Back the Night event on March 26. The event was organized by a campus female activism group and featured sexual assault survivors speaking about their experiences as victims. Multiple attendees accused the players of infringing upon the “safe space” the event is intended to foster, according to The Roanoke Times.

Take Back the Night is a national organization that seeks “to end sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse and all other forms of sexual violence.”

Several attendees wrote letters to the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times, complaining about the players’ behavior. The players arrived late, said they did not know why they were attending the event and spent much of the time looking at their phones, the letters said.

“[T]heir judgmental remarks made it very hard to feel safe,” one wrote. “When survivors took the stage, there was nothing respectful in the way the football team took it, especially in reference to transgender survivors. I am deeply offended and horrified by the disrespectful nature that the players displayed.”

I would suggest that dragging the most aggressive and athletic young men on campus into a place they observably don’t want to be and then flaunting “transgender survivors” in their faces is almost the exact opposite of a “safe space”.

Some things merit disrespect. Maoist consciousness-raising sessions are most certainly one of them.

On bloc voting

First, I was pleased to see that Black Gate accepted their well-deserved and long-overdue Hugo nomination. John O’Neill, who is one of the fairest and most decent individuals on either side of the ideological aisle, explained why:

“Since the Black Gate nomination was for the
entire site (which is run by a group of nearly 40 volunteers, many of
whom are thrilled by the nomination), we did not decline. That’s a
choice that will doubtless expose us to some (perhaps deserved)
criticism.”

John believes SP/RP was “a Spectacularly Bad Idea” and that “There will be a response, and it won’t be pretty.” Of course, we’re already seeing how unpretty that response can be.

“I consider Vox Day one step, either direction, from certifiable.” – Mike Resnick

“Fuck John C. Wright, that cretinous neckbeard, and fuck Vox Day, that pathetic human garbage bin.” – a commenter at Charles Stross’s site

“I cannot abide Vox Day, and I’d drop a planet on his house if I
could. Man’s a misogynistic pig, and that’s an insult to swine.” – Michael Harper

And the latter comment is coming from someone who has REJECTED the Mutually Assured Destruction option being recommended by many, including John O’Neill himself. However much I like John and respect his opinion, I would be remiss if I did not point out there are two serious problems with it:

  1. It is logically incoherent to assert that we are wreckers and indifferent to the long-term fate of the Hugo Awards and to simultaneously threaten MAD. If anyone believes that it is our goal to destroy the awards, they should be begging Sad Puppies to not vote No Award for everything and promising to cast their own votes for everything on the merits. In 2008, there were 483 valid nominating ballots. In 2015, when SP/RP dominated, there were 2,122. It should be readily apparent that anything they can do, we can do bigger, better, and longer. Yes, the other side can bring more in the future. So can we. If they want a showdown, we’ll be there.
  2. Contra John’s belief, I’m not crazy, he is completely wrong, and there IS a bloc operating in secret. Several blocs, as a matter of fact, and a fair number of people have known about them for a long time.

You might be surprised how long small block voting has been going
on in Hugo nominations. In fact, I was having a conversation with a
former Hugo administrator about it last night. The thing is, it’s usually only in a category or two, and usually
either not enough to add a single nominated work, or just enough to add a
single nominated work.
– Deidre Saoirse Moen, April 5, 2015

I do not believe that there was ever a deliberate conspiracy to fill all
the slots in every category with a dedicated “slate” of works. There
clearly have been campaigns to get individual works on the ballot, some of them going beyond the technically legal.
– Kevin Standlee, April 2, 2015

Here is one apparent example. Consider the following vote totals in Best Editor from 2007 to 2013:

2007
88 David G. Hartwell (Tor)
80 Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor)

The next three nominees received between 43 and 28 votes.

2008
70 Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor)
67 David G. Hartwell (Tor)

The next three nominees received between 18 to 51 votes.

2009
87 David G. Hartwell (Tor)
76 Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor)

The other three nominees received 92, 34, and 34 votes.

2010
54 Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor)
47 David G. Hartwell (Tor)

The other three nominees received 99, 61, and 42 votes. Strikethrough indicates that the nomination was declined. As you can see, not everyone gets the message right away.

2011
44  David G. Hartwell (Tor)
31 Patrick Nielsen Hayden (Tor)

The other three nominees received 96, 54, and 23 votes 

Either PNH or Hartwell won the Best Editor Long award every year from 2007 through 2010, with two apiece. Lou Anders of Pyr finished second on the shortlist every year from 2007 through 2013, except for the year he won, in 2011. Now, what is interesting to observe is that in 2007-2008, Anders only had 43 and 51 votes. Anders responded with an effective nomination campaign and came back the next three years with a bloc vote ranging from 92 to 96 votes, finally culminating in a shortlist win in 2011, the year that PNH followed Hartwell’s lead in declining the nomination.

PNH was back in the game the next year, although it looks like he threw his support to Betsy Wolheim of DAW who received 67 nominating votes and won the Best Editor Long award despite never receiving a single nominating vote in 30 previous years and promptly falling off the shortlist the following year, when PNH won again. Two years after winning, Wolheim was back to receiving no nominating votes at all. Sheer coincidence, no doubt. Note that Wolheim is Patrick Rothfuss’s editor, and Rothfuss is an ally of the Scalzi/Stross bloc vote.

And what ho? That year that Wolheim inexplicably received Tor-level nominating votes and won, what do we see in Best Novel, but:

49 The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
48 Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi

Pure coincidence and fanly enthusiasm again, right? Unless you have a two-digit IQ, what you can see here is not only bloc votes of the sort that Standlee and Moen are describing, but competing bloc votes. Anders was able to build a bigger supporting bloc vote at the nominating stage, but he was always beaten out by Tor’s larger non-bloc shortlist voters until the Tor crew eased up and let him win one by stepping aside. Then they threw a bone to Wolheim before resuming business as usual.

And then Sad Puppies entered the picture….

Anyhow, as I told everyone at Black Gate, there is one, and only one, reason that I recommended their nomination. I recommended a Hugo nomination for Black Gate and for Matthew David
Surridge for one very simple reason; they are both among the best in
their categories in the SF/F field. No more, no less. And both deserved Hugos
years ago.

“The key to strategy… is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.”
    —The Vor Game

A note to pro-immigrationists

Do you really want this in the West? Because this is exactly what you are enthusiastically importing everywhere from Spain to the USA. And for those of you of the SJW persuation, notice that there isn’t a single straight white male body among them. Who do you think will die first, well-armed white men willing to fight or unarmed liberals in gun-free zones at universities?

“The terrorists raided the university early on Thursday morning…. A total of 148 people were killed in the six-hour siege, with the gunmen
shooting and beheading those who could not recite the Koran.”

Their greatest threat

The Hugo announcements appear to have driven a few SJWs well around the bend:

This is a man who goes beyond bigot, whose longterm planning looks more and more like creating a Christian version of ISIS. I don’t care about Godwin’s Law, he has written his own Mein Kampf. Forget the “War Against Terrorism”; Vox Day’s Culture War is the greatest threat to us all.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:38 PM on April 5 [5 favorites]

My old Uncle Charlie – he once invited me to call him that – appears to be deeply, deeply disappointed with his black sheep of an adopted nephew:

The screaming question I feel the need to ask, is: why Finland? Could there be a connection between the white supremacist Perussuomalaiset (Finns Party), the overtly racist Sweden Democrats, the Dark Enlightenment/neoreactionary movement, and Vox Day’s peculiarly toxic sect of Christian Dominionist theology?

Over a period of years, he’s built an international coalition, finding
common cause with the European neo-nazi fringe. Now they’ve attempted to
turn the Hugo Awards into a battlefield
in their (American) culture wars. But this clearly isn’t the end game
they have in mind: it’s only a beginning. (The Hugos, by their very
nature, are an award anyone can vote in for a small fee: it is
interesting to speculate on how deep Vox Day’s pockets are.) But the real burning question is, “what will he attack next?”

And now we know how the imagination that once produced Accelerando now exercises itself. Great stuff! My question is if it is “the screaming question” or “the real burning question” that takes priority? Remember, this is one of the very people who informs us that John C. Wright isn’t a Hugo-quality writer, like them. Cuz they be writing real gooder! But at least we now have a proper name for the auxiliary forces of the Evil Legion of Evil, which is the International Coalition of the Willingly Evil.

But I do owe the man for honestly warning me about how speaking my mind freely would pose a serious risk to my career in SF/F. Is Scalzi around? Does that merit a hand job or will a mere “thanks, mate” suffice?

McRapey’s friend Sparklepunter was content to settle for a death wish:

Chris Warcraft@chriswarcraft
The only thing that Vox Day deserves to win is a trip to a society that believes what he espouses so a random person can shoot him.

And another of Scalzi’s little friends, @SFReviews, managed to get his account suspended.

Account suspended
The profile you are trying to view has been suspended.

These people really have their identity tied up as the One True Science Fiction Fans. The mere threat of not collecting their annual rocket tribute has them reacting like Gollum to someone trying to steal his Precious. For who would contemplate something so purely evil, but Evil Nazi Finnsssssss?

If this keeps up, it will provide Anonymous Conservative with enough material for tome on Rabbitology fatter than A Throne of Bones. And you know, for all that they enjoy citing the fact that my father has been imprisoned for years and babbling about how dangerous I am, it’s interesting that they never manage to put the two together. I mean, in the movies, anyhow, people are usually very concerned about those who have direct contacts in the Federal prison system.

UPDATE: James Nicoll digs a deeper hole and swears off Baen Books:

Since Baen’s publisher Toni Weisskopf is part of the Puppies slate for the second year running, I will no longer accept new commissions where the only edition is from Baen and while I will finish current projects involving Baen Books, I won’t link to the Baen edition. I certainly will not be buying anything from Baen in the future. I urge everyone (particularly people with review sites) to do the same.

Not exactly a problem for Castalia House. None of them were ever going to review our books anyhow. What was that a very smart and astonishingly handsome man once said about denying a man a platform?

Mailvox: We are lessened

I just received this news:

“Hello everyone, I am Outlaw’s nephew. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but, unfortunately Outlaw passed away last night at around 7:30. Personally, I had no idea my Uncle had this many followers on his blog. He was always a bright person and always had his own unique opinion on any topic. His death was a very tragic loss to our family. I would like to thank all of you for your prayers and support.”

He’d predicted he wouldn’t live to see Easter.

I know he’s with our Lord, free of pain, it that doesn’t still my sense of loss.

Outlaw X, aka Equus Pallidus, was one of the original Dread Ilk. He was combative and argumentative and difficult and smart and generous and fiercely loyal. He was an early supporter of my writing; he once bought 10 copies of Summa Elvetica for other Ilk who could not afford them. Longtime Ilk will recall that he could get overheated at times, but he always settled down sooner or later.

I wish I’d had
the chance to tell him about the Hugo wipeout yesterday. If he’d been better, there is no way he wouldn’t have been a part of it. And he was one of the primary reasons the Ilk became known as the Dread Ilk. His trampling of Michael Medved on Medved’s own show when Medved was waxing outraged in response to one of my WND columns was epic; I can still here him saying “You made that up in your haid” in that strong Texas accent.

Death comes for us all in time, but few of us will be remembered as fondly as Equus Pallidus. Rest in peace, my friend, and give my best regards to Bane when you see him.

A cunning plan

Watch out! The bitter SJWs and Torlings have come up with a clever two-part plan to take back the Hugo Awards!

  1. Sign up Castalia House for UK mailing lists. Muawahahahahaha.
  2. Blow up the Hugo Awards by voting No Award.

I don’t know about you, but I suddenly find myself questioning if I can find the strength to carry on in light of such effective actions and threats, especially such totally unforeseeable ones such as the latter.

Dear Mr VoxDay AndOtherRacistHomophobes

****** THIS IS AN AUTOMATED RESPONSE FROM TfL’s CUSTOMER SERVICE CENTRE – PLEASE DO NOT REPLY ******

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To make sure you receive our emails, please add Transport_for_London@info.tfl.gov.uk to your email address book.

They’re totally not irrational and flailing wildly about at all. Even other Tor editors besides the NHs are now doubling-down:

I’m asking people to vote for No Award (not a person named “Noah Ward,” please note), which is the escape clause the rules give us to signal that the process is broken. I don’t expect you to understand how it’s broken. Clearly the principles you’re basing your argument are radically different from mine. In these late days of traditional fandom, as sad as that is, it’s not surprising.
– Moshe Feder, Consulting Senior Editor for Tor Books

 I’m going to assume everyone here understands the concept of statistical variance. Here are the variances compared for the SP2 nominees, the top vote getter in the eight major categories in 2014, and the suspicious Tor darlings from 2008 to 2013. Can you spot the bloc votes?

    Variance: 3773.9 (SP 2014)    Variance:  1493.8 (SP 2013)    Variance: 1.6 (Tor 2008)    Variance: 98.6 (Tor 2009)    Variance: 119.1 (Tor 2010)    Variance: 4.7 (Tor 2012)    Variance: 14.9 (Tor 2013)

Note that 2008 is when Scalzi posted his most blatant “Award Pimpage Post” and he and Stross finished within 3 votes of each other for Best Novel (41), Best Novel (40) and Best Fan Writer. (43). That same year, Tor editors PNH (70) and David Hartwell (67) were within 3 votes of each other as well. Its pretty obvious that there was an additional “suck up to the big dogs at Tor vote of 30 votes over the Scalzi/Stross alliance.

By contrast, this year, the leading vote-getter in Best Novel, presumably Correia, received 387 votes, which was similar to the 384 votes in Best Editor Long, presumably Weisskopf. Bloc vote, right? Well, no, that doesn’t hold up because it is far more than the 230 that Wright presumably got in Short Story or the 201 that Johnson presumably got in Best Fan Writer. It’s too soon to tell, but there may be more variance among the people who voted for John Wright in Best Novella alone than between the 2008 Stross/Scalzi vote.

To claim that TWO 3-vote variances in a single year are LESS suspicious than an open slate that differed by at least 186 votes is either dishonest or insane. Especially when both Scalzi and Stross are self-admitted Hugo campaigners.

He is risen!

24 Now
upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came
unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and
certain others with them. 2 And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.
3 And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.
4 And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:
5 And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?
6 He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,
7 Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.
8 And they remembered his words,
9 And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.
10 It
was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other
women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.
11 And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.
12 Then
arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld
the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself
at that which was come to pass.
– Luke 24:1-12

Many wondrous things have come, and will come, to pass. But none is more wonderful than this, the empty tomb.

The everyday battles in which we find ourselves engaged are nothing more than ripples and reflections of this, the one true battle, the centuries-old war between the Prince of this world and the Son of Man. Contemplate how dark and hopeless everything must have looked to the apostles, and to women like Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary, after the Crucifixion. So when things seem dark and hopeless, when you feel outnumbered and alone, when you look at the barbarians rampaging inside the gates and despair at what the future will bring, remind yourself of two things.

The tomb is empty. He is risen.

Happy Easter.