The Damage is Profound

The most important thing to note about President Trump’s return to the White House is the way in which it completely confounds the arguments that Republican moderates and conservatives alike have been making since 1988, which is that chasing the electorate left is the way to win elections and gain popularity. The New York Times is panicking over the disarray in which the Democratic Party finds itself.

Patrick Healy: In my 20-plus years writing about politics, I’ve never seen the Democratic Party in such trouble nationally. They lost the White House and Senate and are seen unfavorably by record numbers of voters and out of step on key issues, according to recent polls. I think part of this is a trust problem — you still hear from independents and even some Democrats that the party tried to pull a fast one on America by circling the wagons around a cognitively diminished president and then subbing in a new nominee whom voters didn’t pick. I think the damage to the party is worse — and maybe longer lasting — than Democratic leaders may realize, and these problems make it harder for the Democrats to persuasively counter President Trump. How do you see the state of the party?

Michelle Goldberg: I agree that the damage to the party is profound, but I’m not sure there’s reason to think it will be lasting. After 2004, another devastating election for Democrats, absolutely no one would have predicted that Democrats would triumph four years later by nominating an urbane Black first-term senator from Chicago whose middle name was Hussein. After Jan. 6, many of us naïvely thought that Trump’s brand was irreparably damaged. The one constant in American politics, it seems to me, is that things tend to change faster than people predict. The last Trump administration ended in absolute mayhem, and the signs so far suggest that this one will be worse. I’m not sure how much anyone will be thinking about Joe Biden’s age in 2028, or even 2026.

Bret Stephens: Democrats don’t seem to realize how profoundly out of touch they are with that segment of America that they can’t identify through a collection of letters or neologisms: BIPOC, L.G.B.T.Q.I.+, A.A.P.I., the “unhoused,” the “undocumented” and so on. They have lost themselves in forms of identity politics that divide Americans into categories many don’t recognize or from which they feel excluded. And I don’t just mean white, male, Christian Americans. For example, ask many Hispanics what they think of the term “Latinx,” a nonsensical term in a gendered language like Spanish, and you might begin to grasp why more than 40 percent of Hispanic men voted for Trump. Similarly, ask many feminists what they think of the term “birthing people” or “persons with vaginas” and you might risk a well-deserved slap…

Stephens: Democrats tried the politics of “resistance” against Trump by painting him as a beyond-the-pale threat to the constitutional order. Maybe that’s right, but I don’t think it’s effective. 

People want leadership, and followership is not leadership. The stronger the horse, the more it pulls people in the direction that it is going. And President Trump is a very strong horse indeed.

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They’re Not Independent

Clown World’s propaganda organs in Ukraine and Russia are going under because the USAID money pipeline has been cut off:

The suspension of USAID has had a dramatic effect on both Ukrainian and Russian independent news outlets that relied on the grants to operate and produced work often critical of their governments.
The program that provides billions in U.S. assistance internationally is better known for its humanitarian and medical work, but the funding has also been used for democracy promotion as well as supporting journalism.

Ukraine’s independent media, a collection of small regional outlets, muckraking investigative websites and internet news platforms, have been reeling since the announcement, with some organizations saying that they are just weeks away from slashing staff or closing down entirely.

“We risk losing the achievements of three decades of work and increasing threats to Ukraine’s statehood, democratic values, and pro-Western orientation,” Detector Media, a journalism watchdog, said in a statement on its website last week.

In the immortal words of Chuck D from Public Enemy:

Shut ’em down. Shut ’em down. Shut ’em, shut ’em down.

Shut ’em down. Shut ’em down. Shut ’em, shut ’em down.

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Forbes on The Folio Society

A gushing Forbes article on the importance and elegance of deluxe books:

When Joanna Reynolds first became CEO of The Folio Society in 2016, the London-based publishing company known for its beautifully illustrated hardcover editions of classic books had been steadily losing money for a decade and was on the verge of being sold. “It kind of lost its way,” Reynolds, a veteran of Time Life Europe and Reader’s Digest, tells me over Zoom. From its post-war inception in 1947, Folio operated as an annual book club, with members signing up to receive four titles a year. “That model everywhere had kind of died, really,” adds Reynolds. “So we [made] a complete change.”

That 21st century innovation not only required the phasing out of an obsolete business model, but also the expansion of what Folio could publish in terms of genre (i.e. moving into science fiction, fantasy, and children’s content), the number of books it could release a year (from four to between 40 and 50), and how those books were marketed to the public.

Most important, however, is maintaining a brand associated with handcrafted beauty and elegance. Every deluxe edition put out by Folio is made with the intention of having the resultant tome occupy prime real estate on a book lover’s shelf for years to come. Such commitment to visual sophistication attracts acclaimed authors, artists, and even fellow publishers like Marvel Entertainment.

Still, I couldn’t help noticing that the Forbes article left out one rather significant element that one would think would have been both timely and relevant.

Neil Gaiman has been removed from UK agent Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ client list after the Good Omens writer has faced a string of sexual misconduct allegations over the past six months. The change to Casarotto Ramsay’s client list comes amid a wave of creative partners severing ties with Gaiman and his work. Anansi Boys publisher Dark Horse Comics has dropped the once-celebrated writer, while a UK stage production of Coraline was canceled this week.

The Terry Pratchett Estate has now cut ties to Gaiman as well. Apparently pTerry’s heirs have had their fill of Gaiman attempting to trade on a close friendship that was, at the very least, greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated. A one-time co-writing experience is seldom indicative of being bestest buddies, especially when one of the co-writers a) did most of the work and b) is observably disinclined to ever repeat the experience.

Below is a screenshot of the Folio Society’s website from this very morning, only six months after the beginning of #GaimanGate. The reason all the novels by other authors are on the list of 32 (!) Gaiman-related books is because Folio asked Gaiman to provide their deluxe editions with forewords and introductions, although what a mediocrity like Gaiman could possibly have to say about Gene Wolfe defies belief. Now, doesn’t it seem a little odd that Forbes didn’t even ask Folio about this apparent contradiction between their oft-expressed social justice values and the particular authors they choose to feature?

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The Russians Knew

Vladimir Putin admits that the Russians knew the 2020 election was stolen and none of the six Joe Bidens were ever elected President of the United States:

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said the 2020 US presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump, and that had the outcome been declared fairly, the Ukraine conflict might have been avoided.

“I cannot disagree with him that if he had been president, if his victory hadn’t been stolen in 2020, perhaps the crisis in Ukraine that arose in 2022 wouldn’t have happened,” Putin has said in an interview published by Russia 1 TV journalist Pavel Zarubin on Telegram on Friday…

Trump has never admitted that he lost the 2020 election, despite courts failing to find evidence of widespread voter fraud. He has consistently alleged the 2020 election was blighted by irregularities, and that he lost despite winning 10 million more votes than Biden.

I’ve never admitted it either, because he didn’t. My early estimates were as accurate in 2020 as they were in 2016 and 2024, the only thing they couldn’t account for was millions, perhaps even tens of millions, of fake votes. I have never, ever believed, not for one second, that Joe Biden got more votes in Minnesota than Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama. The election fraud was clear, blatant, obvious, and statistically undeniable, and the fact that the media not only wasn’t all over it, but actively denied it is one reason that I no longer read any US “newspapers” or watch any US “news” channels.

It’s counterintuitive, but you will actually develop a better sense for what is going on in the world, and in the USA, if you completely ignore what passes for the mainstream news and the conservative news alike. What they report is the Narrative, not the news.

I’m not surprised that the Russians knew exactly what was going on. I assume the Chinese and the Israelis did too. The certain knowledge that the “rules-based world order” of “the Western democracies” was resting on a completely false foundation that was neither rules-based nor democratic was probably what proved the decisive factor in deciding to begin openly opposing it because it meant Clown World had lost the rhetorical high ground.

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Neil Gaiman Doesn’t Believe All Women

The man accused of sexually assaulting and/or raping 8 women and counting finally breaks cover to issue a denial that directly contradicts his previous dictate to believe all women. Fandom Pulse provides the text and the context:

Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation. I’ve always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I’ve now reached the point where I feel that I should say something.

As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.

I went back to read the messages I exchanged with the women around and following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive. These messages read now as they did when I received them – of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again. At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides.

And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people’s hearts and feelings, and that’s something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people’s.

I’ve spent some months now taking a long, hard look at who I have been and how I have made people feel.

Like most of us, I’m learning, and I’m trying to do the work needed, and I know that that’s not an overnight process. I hope that with the help of good people, I’ll continue to grow. I understand that not everyone will believe me or even care what I say but I’ll be doing the work anyway, for myself, my family and the people I love. I will be doing my very best to deserve their trust, as well as the trust of my readers.

At the same time, as I reflect on my past – and as I re-review everything that actually happened as opposed to what is being alleged – I don’t accept there was any abuse. To repeat, I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone.

Some of the horrible stories now being told simply never happened, while others have been so distorted from what actually took place that they bear no relationship to reality. I am prepared to take responsibility for any missteps I made. I’m not willing to turn my back on the truth, and I can’t accept being described as someone I am not, and cannot and will not admit to doing things I didn’t do.

And once more, we see conclusive evidence that Neil Gaiman is a mediocre writer of fiction. I very much hope that some of his accusers will take him to court for defamation, because his absurd statement literally stinks of evasiveness, Machiavellianism, spin, ex post facto revisionism, and lies.

Perhaps the most amusing claim is that the objectively biggest fame-whore in BOTH comics and science fiction over the last four decades has “always tried to be a private person”. Think about the massive scope and scale of that obvious and so easily disproven lie, think about the chutzpah required to conclude that your naked assertion will outweigh the literally tens of thousands of items of evidence to the contrary, and then consider the probability that he is telling the truth about anything else.

I think Reddit might actually melt down in response to this. I cannot believe either his legal team or his PR team thought this was a good idea, no matter how completely the news of his alleged crimes has broken contain.

UPDATE: Even his biggest fans from the subreddit devoted to him aren’t buying this. They’re not buying ANY of it at all.

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LA 2.0

There can be absolutely no doubt that a) the Los Angeles fires were not organic and b) they were part of a plan to rebuild the city in accordance with the principles and preferences of the ruling elite. It’s exactly the same situation as Maui, only on a larger scale. The property is too valuable to be left to the plebs, so the insurance policies have been cancelled, and various other legal machinations will be created in order to incentivize homeowners to sell their properties for dimes on the dollar.

The corrupt California governor, Gavin Newsome, has been caught on camera talking openly about how the planning teams for LA 2.0 are already in place and at work, which means that they were being put together long before the first fire even started.

Neither the Maui nor the LA fires were an accident.

UPDATE: Miles Mathis knew something was afoot very early on:

I saw the first reports Tuesday evening, then followed it over the next few hours. Before I went to sleep I checked overnight wind predictions from Weather Underground, since the mainstream was saying wind would remain high overnight. That would be extremely rare, since wind normally dies down at night. Weather is not completely predictable, of course, but they are very accurate just a few hours out, and the professionals were confirming to me winds would drop down to about 5mph overnight. That would last at least 14 hours, so I assumed hotshot teams would fly in from all over the state and knock this thing down overnight. There are no other fires in the state, since northern California has gotten a lot of rain in the past two months. Where I am we have gotten a thorough soaking since November. So all the planes and helicopters across the entire state should have been free to assist. Besides, this was Pacific Palisades, home of the rich, so you would expect the response to be at maximum. No expense would be spared.

But of course we all know that isn’t what happened. When I woke up about noon, I checked both Calfire and Wunderground first thing. Wunderground confirmed the winds overnight had been very calm all across the LA area, and wouldn’t be as strong on Wednesday as they had been on Tuesday. Tuesday peaked about 25mph, and Wednesday was supposed to peak at about 15mph. Brisk, but not too strong to fight fires very successfully. But when I went to Calfire, I was in for a shock: zero containment. Not only that, but the mainstream and alternative reports were both full of downright lies, trying to push 100mph winds on me, high overnight winds, and no fall-off on Wednesday. So I knew immediately the usual mischief was afoot, mischief that had to be something like we saw in Lahaina.

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Game Over, Gaiman

The Dark Herald nukes Neil Gaiman by pointing out his essential mediocrity:

Neil Gaiman had an extraordinary career. And I mean that literally. It was Extra Ordinary.

Writers who’ve hit it big all have the same complaint. Some rando will come up to them and make the following offer; “I’ve got this absolutely amazing idea for a story. Here’s the deal, I’ll tell you about the idea, then you write the book and then we split the money.” Gaiman’s biggest successes were in getting people to actually do that for him. Anyone who’s read Terry Pratchett knows damn good and well who did all of the heavy lifting in Good Omens. Even Gaiman admitted it. As for Sandman, the most amazing comic book of all time, how much of that comic’s success was due to the artwork? Without Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, Bryan Talbot, and Michael Zulli, would anyone have the vivid impressions of that title that they do? They were the real storytellers, Gaiman just had the ‘amazing idea.’ Which half the time were retreads of somebody else’s work.

As for the King of Dreams, let’s be honest here, Morpheus was nothing more than a Mary Sue and a pretty obvious one at that. And one that no one can look at now without seeing the true horror it was masking. Sandman is about to be swept under the rug alongside his “creator.”

It is over. It is ended.

But Larry Correia most definitely won the best quote competition:

Years ago John Scalzi declared me teaching armed self-defense classes to women was “victim blaming”. Turns out Scalzi just didn’t want his friend Neil Gaiman to get shot.

And speaking of John Scalzi, he managed to both a) avoid condemning Gaiman and b) make the entire scandal about himself and his feelings. Again. The man really chose the wrong career, as instead of a mediocre pop SF writer, he could have been the greatest White House press officer the world has ever seen.

  • I hate every single possible thing about this, and I’m heartbroken about all of it.
  • I’ve admired Neil’s work immensely, but my connection is, we’re friends and have been for some time. All this has been a set of punches to the gut. I’ve been (reasonably) criticized about not being louder sooner, but processing bad news about friends is a thing, and it hurts.
  • This is at odds with my public persona of “moderately famous nerd has opinions online,” plus there are folks who believe that the SF/F field has been unusually silent on Neil and find that troubling. So, some backlash for me on it. Fair enough. There’s no response that’ll make everyone happy. If I don’t comment there will be “his silence is telling,” and if I do respond there will be “way to make it about you,” and if I acknowledge any grief, I’ll get knocked for my “processing,” etc. I accept a ration of crap is mine no matter what.

And finally, two women on Reddit reveal that women on the science fiction tour circuit have known about Gaiman for 25 years, but it’s been swept under the table and kept quiet by a conspiracy of bookstore owners and people working in the publishing industry.

  • I was warned to stay away from Neil Gaiman when I was in college. So approximately 25 years ago. Despite never having been at an event he was present at. Women in the science fiction and con communities have been trying to keep each other safe from him for a long time. When the public allegations came out, the reaction I heard from a lot of women was “good, we’re allowed to talk about this now”.
  • I had the same experience in the early aughts. I was a pratchett fan, found good omens through that route, and was talking to an older woman in the sci fi community about the book. She warned me to stay away from Neil Gaiman and said he liked to take advantage of young fans. Now that all this news is coming out I’m so, so grateful to her but horrified that nothings come to light sooner.

And to absolutely no one’s surprise, the meme masters at Neil Gaiman Memes do not disappoint.

On a related note, there’s a new remix of Mr. Tubcuddle (Coraline’s Eyes) at Sigma Game.

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The Conservative Rock Star

L’il Benny has come a long way from his days as the openly imperialist Littlest Chickenhawk, and as the Hollywood Reporter – which is famous for its panegyrics to conservatives and Republicans – breathlessly reports, his massive success is totally real, totally organic, and not at all fake and manufactured:

Shapiro admits that, yes, he was once a Never Trumper. “In 2016, I didn’t vote for either candidate because I didn’t know if President Trump was going to be conservative,” he says in a bit of self-serving revisionism. Like many other right wing media figures at the time, he eloquently spoke about Trump’s many moral failures and called him a joke — but eventually caved. He maintains, however, that his take on Trump as a person is basically the same. As he puts it to me on the plane, “My opinion of Trump characterologically has not changed.”

But once Trump was in office, “right away he nominated Justice [Neil] Gorsuch, and I put on a MAGA hat,” says Shapiro. “In 2020, obviously, I backed him. And in 2024, I gave money to his campaign, I fundraised for him. I campaigned in six states. If we back him and if he does the right things, which I think he will, then America will be great.”

It’s mildly amusing that even a puff-piece article about Ben Shapiro can’t help but show what a complete fraud he is. The thing is, I knew Ben Shapiro back when he had a conscience. He made a conscious, informed decision to sell his soul and his mind for fame and money. And I can assure you, he knows better than anyone else what an intellectual imposter he is.

As for the so-called “fastest-growing conservative empire”, the Daily Wire, well, conservative Boomers have always been suckers for those who despise them pretending to be one of them. But the Daily Wire has never been able to conserve its professed positions and principles any more than conservatives managed to conserve marriage or the Ladies Room.

Universal Press Syndicate signed my WND column because they thought I was the intellectual heir to William F. Buckley. As it turns out, it’s Ben Shapiro who was his true heir. In more ways than one..

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GaimanGate: The Next Chapter

It appears the next chapter in the ongoing Neil Gaiman sexual assault scandal is about to begin. From r/NeilGaimanUncovered:

This is a heads-up as promised (and the last update) before the long-awaited article. We are only a few days away from publication. The article will be posted in this sub as soon as it’s out and we’ll include trigger warnings so vulnerable members can engage with highly disturbing content on their terms.

Rest assured, the memewarriors at Neil Gaiman Memes are ready and will be memeing up a storm on the basis of the new information once it is revealed. And as can be seen in the meme below, it’s not exactly a mystery as to why Gaiman did what he is accused of doing, why his purported “success” was manufactured for him, or why he has seemingly been protected for so long. As with the British politician mentioned in the prior post, he makes it very clear who and what he serves.

One Gaiman fan on Reddit was skeptical that anyone could possibly have had any idea about Gaiman prior to the allegations going public last year:

Can anyone point me to some threads or posts where people shared their feelings of ick about Gaiman from before the allegations went public? So many people here were feeling the same thing, surely there are documented cases of people speaking out.

Here are three from this blog alone. The posts from 2017 and 2018 are mine, the one from 2013 is from a reviewer I was quoting. But my disdain for Gaiman as a writer and novelist is well-documented, and while I didn’t read enough of his work to be certain that he was a bad person prior to the 2024 allegations of sexual assault, much less the manufactured creature he now appears to be, he was most definitely in the “yeah, this guy is probably off” category after reading American Gods and a few issues of Sandman, after which I stopped reading him. Although, to be fair, it was the mediocrity that was the reason, not the probability that he was what he turned out to be.

  • 2018: If you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates.
  • 2017: It is right and proper to judge the artist on the basis of the art. More often than not, the art created by the artist provides relevant insight into his psyche; it is very difficult to write the opposite sex well and it is also very difficult for a man to write characters who are different than his own socio-sexual rank. Read Louis L’Amour and Robert Ludlum. Then read John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman. The difference is readily observable. Then read Piers Anthony and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Notice the creep factor? Exactly. This is one area where you can reliably trust your feelings.
  • 2013: Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods and Anansi Boys are written by the exact same man. It’s that Mr. Stock Type shows up for all four, each iteration as dull and insufferable as the last, distinguishable only faintly by his name. Leaving American Gods and Stardust alone for now, this isn’t so much a matter of “oh you could do this to any fantasy book,” itself an asinine proposition, because not all fantasy books feature a timid Londoner devoid of ambition who has relationship troubles with a demanding sweetheart/fiancee. The sweethearts in question(respectively Rosie Noah, Jessica, and Victoria Forrester) are likewise identical: thinly written, demanding, henpecking, and not the brightest. Really Gaiman kind of sucks at writing women, and apart from this one incredibly tertiary character in American Gods I don’t think he’s particularly comfortable with gay men–certainly not enough to write them as protagonists. Similarly, the catalyst to “finding the secret magic world” is always more or less the same: through colliding with one of said secret world’s inhabitants.

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Reject Diversity

There is absolutely no benefit to giving into the demands for diversity. If you don’t give in, you’ll take the heat but you won’t suffer the negative consequences of destroying your organization. If you do give into them, you’ll first suffer the negative consequences of destroying your organization, then you’ll take even more heat for trying to fix the new problems the diversity created for you.

Since two black NFL coaches were fired, one who was unprepared and abysmal and one who was merely overmatched, the social justice warriors on ESPN and social media are going crazy about how unfair it is that some white coaches who didn’t have good seasons weren’t… even though three white coaches and the only Arab coach were. This was a particularly stupid complaint:

Interesting how Black head coaches get 1 year to turn around terrible teams…. Meanwhile, Brian Daboll

Brian Daboll of the New York Giants wasn’t fired after the 2024 season for three reasons. He’s already won a playoff game, he’s won Coach of the Year, and the Giants ownership is famously patient by NFL standards. He is also a very highly-regarded offensive coordinator who developed successful offenses at Buffalo and at the University of Alabama.

Jared Mayo and Antonio Pierce were both promoted too soon and they were put into positions where their failure was all but guaranteed in the name of diversity. That’s what promoting diversity in the place of competence, let alone excellence, does. It puts unprepared and incompetent people into positions where they cannot possibly succeed. Hiring Mike Tomlin is not promoting diversity; Mike Tomlin is a great coach and I was very unhappy when he was hired away from the Vikings by the Steelers before the Vikings could replace Brad Childress with him. Hiring Kwesi Adofo-Mensah isn’t promoting diversity either, as based on the way he overcame an incredibly difficult preseason, he may be the best young general manager in the entire league as well as one of the smartest.

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