The Problem, Not the Answer

Voting Republican is not going to solve any – and I mean literally zero – of the growing problems facing a USA in deep decline. I described them as one faction of the “bi-factional ruling party” nearly 20 years ago and I see absolutely zero need to alter that description. They are arguably even more responsible for destroying the USA than the Democrats.

Republicans in the Idaho legislature are looking to approve a resolution that would ask President Joe Biden, as well as Congress, to flood the United States labor market with more foreign workers as well as to grant an amnesty that would give green cards to millions of illegal aliens holding American jobs.

A resolution, authored by State Sen. Jim Guthrie (R) and cosponsored by State Sens. Treg Bernt (R), Linda Hartgen (R), and Chuck Winder (R), asks the federal government to stem the flow of illegal immigration by requiring E-Verify for employers, among other things, while also expanding the number of foreign workers business can import to take mostly working class, blue-collar jobs.

The goal, the resolution states, ought to be to fill U.S. jobs with a constant stream of foreign workers. Amnesty, which would reward illegal aliens with work permits and green cards, should be part of any such legislation, the Republicans write in the resolution.

Yes, the Democrats are evil and stupid. But the Republicans are stupid and evil. Neither party is even remotely interested in defending the national interest of Americans.

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Antisemitism, Han-style

Only a few years after rejecting the planned “leap to China”, Tablet laments the way the Chinese are now actively turning against the Jewish people for reasons that appear to be based on nothing more than a straightforward observation of the decline and incipient fall of the United States over the 20th century.

According to Lu’s videos and commentary, Jews are manipulators, penny-pinchers, loan sharks, and drug dealers. More than an ethnic group bound by blood and history, they operate like a private club, an elitist cabal whose members are linked by a web of common interests, “especially the American Jews.” It is through these social connections that Jews have infiltrated key global positions and “took control of the three cornerstones of American society, namely finance, media, and culture.” The Jewish penetration of American power is so far advanced that the Bush, Obama, and Biden families and administrations have all fallen prey to Jewish influence. Because Jews control the anti-China U.S. media and hold key positions in Biden’s anti-China cabinet, they are the “ideological voice” of the United States, the spearhead of the West’s accelerating crusade against the Chinese government and people.

How perfectly outrageous! This Chinese criticism of an innocent and saintly people who have never harmed anyone and never done nothing wrong to nobody is hateful, antisemitic, and, unfortunately, appears to be 100-percent accurate.

The thing is, you can fool all the people some of the time, but if you’re an ethnic cabal of wicked pedophiles who believe you’re destined to rule the world on behalf of your master, Satan, eventually some of the people are going to notice this and take exception to both you and your objectives, no matter how many names you manage to call them.

And if you attack those who are doing nothing more than observably telling the readily-confirmable truth, eventually everyone is going to figure out that you’re a community of shameless liars and literally nothing that any of you say can be taken at face value.

Xi Xinping is the most intelligent world leader on the scene today. The great Chinese strategist Wang Hunin was 20 years ahead of me in his geostrategic observations. So, I very much doubt that anyone is going to be successful in gaslighting either of them, no matter how many Western institutions they happen to have at their disposal.

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Discernment and the Lack Thereof

On last night’s Darkstream, I explained how a lack of discernment is the reason conservatives keeps falling for gatekeepers and accepting former enemies as their thought, opinion, and political leaders, which contributes greatly to conservatism seldom being able to accomplish more than lose gracefully over time. After which, an exchange on SG usefully illustrated how fruitless it is to point out these things to people who will persist in their patterns of behavior no matter what has been explained to them.

SG01: From Darkstream 1013 — “The more someone looks like a messiah, the more we should be worried they are an antichrist.” — Let those longing for a solution via Great Men take heed.

SG02: The antichrist will be widely hailed and pushed by globohomo as a savior. If globohomo hates and opposes him, it’s not a shoo-in, but he might be worth looking deeper into.

FFS, how is it possible that telling people “don’t do X” is somehow heard and interpreted by them as “you should totally do X”?

SG02 is exactly the sort of person who gets fooled on a regular basis by gatekeepers. One can just about guarantee his past enthusiasm for Ben Shapiro “owning the libs” and “making liberal heads explode” before promptly falling for Jordan Peterson’s brave opposition to custom pronouns and Candace Owens’s brave abandonment of her now-forgotten SJW past. In a previous generation, he would have embraced Irving Kristol and the neoconservatives on the basis of their staunch opposition to communism and the Soviet Union.

The “heel turn” is a much-used tool in the Clown World playbook. The Prometheans prefer to have their clowns in control of both sides, which is why I have referred to “the bi-factional ruling party” in place of Democrats and Republicans for more than two decades. Ronald Reagan was probably the most successful heel turn in political history, smoothly transforming himself from a Democratic Party activist to the most-beloved Republican President over a period of less than 20 years, from May 1962 to March 1981. And oh, how the Democrats hated and opposed him!

The only metric for reliably judging an individual is by the sum total of his actual words and deeds, never by his purported opposition or by who “hates and opposes him”. Attempting to objectively determine substance on the basis of an oppositional metric is literally retarded.

Consider: most people genuinely believed Jordan Peterson was opposed by globohomo, indeed, its leading opponent, on the basis of one single softball interview when he’d been working directly for them for decades, even though everything in his books pointed directly to him being an enthusiastic globalist and ticket-taker.

Not only is the oppositional metric reliably false, but it is based on a false foundation. The enemy of your enemy may be your friend, but he should never, ever, be accepted as your leader. And the convert who is ever so eager to help you, nay, to lead and advise you, is almost certainly an infiltrator whose objective is to destroy your organization.

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You Wanted Conan

And The Legend Chuck Dixon gave you Conan. The real Conan, the barbarian Conan, the Cimmerian Conan, the public domain Conan, the Conan about whom Robert E. Howard wrote, not the latter-day copyrighted Conan created by L. Sprague de Camp Conan, about whom one critic wrote: “L. Sprague de Camp is an insufferable hack and his choices both in writing his own criticism and curating this collection are baffling”, and most definitely not the Hollywood Conan.

Now you have multiple options to get your hands on Chuck Dixon’s Conan, but keep in mind that only the Arkhaven store will provide you the ebook along with the paperback edition. We’ll be placing our order for shipment to the fulfillment center tomorrow, so this is a good time to take action if you’re interested.

Bounding Into Comics interviewed The Legend about his latest novel.

Speaking with Bounding Into Comics, Dixon explained why he wanted to write this story, “I wanted to write a straight up war story of Conan’s time as a mercenary. But I also wanted to throw in a Lovecraftian monster as well as a depiction of dark sorcery in the Hyperborean Age with all its dire consequences.”

Dixon also relished the challenge to write in what he describes as Howard’s bravura style, “I was totally immersed in Howard’s bravura writing style as an adolescent. I liked the challenge of creating a new Conan story written in that style.”

He added, “So much of Howard’s prose relied on the reader to create vivid images in their own imaginations as they read. I really wanted to see if I could inspire that same brand of wild visuals.”

Meanwhile, the Dark Herald reviewed THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL at Arkhaven.

During the 1980s, Baen Books decided to do the world a massive favor and publish a huge library of Robert Howard stories in their original un-De Camped form. I was struck by the unexpected quality of Howard’s work. I’d heard a lot of criticism of Howard’s original stories by De Camp, Stephen King, and several others. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. It had nothing at all to do with Howard’s prose and everything to do with politics. Although in King’s case, it could have been opinions generated by the mountains of coke he was snorting back then.

Howard was more than capable of subtly and subtext; his Conan was a complex hero. While taciturn and stoic, he would never leave a helpless innocent to the hands of those who found joy in cruelty.

Robert Howard had a great respect and indeed love for ancient history. He wanted to tell stories set in remote antiquity, but he also wanted them to be accurate to period. This presented him with a fundamental problem. In his hometown of Cross Plains, the resources of the Texas oil boom town’s library were it and they were obviously insufficient for his needs. So, he did the next best thing and created a completely fictional world from whole cloth. One that was a reflection of the ancient world but was not constrained by it. In so doing, Robert Howard invented an entire genre called Sword and Sorcery by Fritz Lieber.

Think about that for a second, this pulp writer in a small Texas boon town created an entirely new category of fiction and he’s been despised by all right-thinking people for it ever since.

Who in this modern world could hope to do justice to the works of a man born at the turn of the last century that venerated the purity and strength of the barbarous?

The Legend Chuck Dixon, that’s who.

The Legend has already completed the second book, THE CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED, and is now working on a third. Both of these books will be illustrated by Ademir Leal, the cover artist for THE SIEGE OF THE BLACK CITADEL.

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You Had One Job

And you didn’t do it. Ursule K. Le Guin’s son and literary executor explains why he is revising her work in order to bring it more in line with modern social justice sensibilities:

My job is to bring my mother’s work to new generations of readers, not to revise it. People who adore a book are often eager to transform it, through screen adaptation, fan fiction or critical reinterpretation. Sometimes this works well; often it doesn’t. I tend to start from the position that Ursula’s words are sacred, so my initial reaction to the editor’s request was that of a strict constructivist.

After deep breaths, and with Ursula’s own revisionism in mind, I contacted a disability rights attorney, a youth literature consultant, a racial educator, and some kids. My advisory group leaned toward change but was not in consensus. I genuinely didn’t know what my mother would have decided. But she left me a clue: a note over her desk asking, “Is it true? Is it necessary or at least useful? Is it compassionate or at least unharmful?”

I like to think that truth and compassion are immutable even as the language we use to express them changes. But cultural constructs of harm are mutable; we frequently revise our definition of what’s harmful to whom, how it is spoken of, and who gets to do the speaking. My mother’s note tipped me toward changing her words. I found substitutes that would retain the original meaning and cadence, and stipulated to the publisher that the new editions would note that the text had been revised.

Criticism of changes to Dahl’s books can just as well be leveled at my own decision. Closest to my anxiety is the reaction of Susanne Nossel, of PEN America, who counsels us to “consider how the power to rewrite books might be used in the hands of those who do not share their values and sensibilities.” Although this haunts me, people who don’t share my sensibilities about artistic freedom seem to prefer to ban or burn books, usually without having read them.

In other words, literature must be defaced in order to make it acceptable to the lowest-common denominator, thereby turning books, which preserve human knowledge, into a form of ephemeral entertainment akin to television.

We really do need to see about getting that Castalia History subscription going before it’s too late.

This is why successful authors are well-advised to formally place their work into the public domain rather than trust their children, and especially, their grandchildren, to be faithful to their work and to protect their historical words. With the exception of a few loyal souls like Christopher Tolkien, most literary heirs are far more concerned with how their predecessor’s works are perceived by their friends and acquaintances than they are with doing their one job of preserving the family literary legacy.

I’ve personally witnessed this myself, where the literary heirs would rather see their predecessor’s work continue vanishing unread into history than risk embarrassing them with a revival of its historical appeal.

This is another reason why current copyright law is downright evil; it tends to destroy an author’s legacy rather than preserve it. Life of the author is a sufficient period for copyright, with an additional 10-year period to benefit the heirs and provide a foundation for providing a literary legacy for those heirs genuinely interested in doing so.

And it is, of course, amusing that he attempts to justify his decision to modify his mother’s works by appealing to the belief that others won’t take similar liberties. But once one accepts the principle that texts can be deemed unacceptable to the public in their original state, one has already justified their burning. And it’s just a matter of time before someone who doesn’t approve of that work for one reason or another comes to power.

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Shut Down Those Free Markets

Keep this timely trading halt in mind the next time you hear some moronic economist blathering on about the so-called “free market” and its very important benefits:

Trading was temporarily halted in dozens of regional banks this morning as shares fell by up to 75 percent when the market opened after Joe Biden claimed ‘US banking is safe.’ Major US banks were also hit as contagion fears spread through the sector with Wells Fargo plummeting 7.5 percent, Bank of America falling 7.4 percent, Citigroup plunging 5.8 percent and JP Morgan down 2.7 percent.

Regional bank Western Alliance saw its stock price plunge by three quarters as the opening bell sounded on Wall Street, while shares in First Republic dived 67 percent and PacWest by more than 35 percent. Trading circuit breakers were swiftly implemented to protect the market from rampant volatility.

I doubt this is the final cataclysmic crash, but it is certainly a harbinger of the eventual and inevitable one.

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