Tag: philosophy

The broken freaks of fandom

They really are mentally ill, self-hating nutcases. I’ve said for years that the SJWs of science fiction are a vast collection of human wreckage. That’s why their parasitical books are so dreadful, devoid of all beauty, joy, truth, and love, and from a literary perspective, amount to little more than fingerpainting in fecal matter. They are morally blind, mentally weak societal cancers. One would pity them if only they did not attempt to recreate the world in their ugly, soul-shattered image.

They have many reasons to dislike me, but they main reason they hate and fear me is because, in my self-assurance, I remind them of the bullies who scarred them for life. And here is the conclusive proof that I was right: 100+ Sci-Fi & Fantasy Authors Blog About Suicide, Depression, PTSD—a #HoldOnToTheLight Update by Gail Z. Martin

  • My wife, doctor, and I developed a scale of rage from 1 to 10, 1 being “everything’s cool” to 10 being “I am out of control and breaking shit in the house, car, and my body.” It’s been…let’s see…maybe a few months since I had no-holds-barred Level 10 outburst. But I come close every week or two. I probably reach an 8 once every ten days. But that’s down from a 10 every other week or so. I hate me more than any ten, a hundred, or a thousand people on earth combined could ever hope to. (Even more than Kirkus and Goodreads reviewers, if such a thing be possible!) That’s my legacy. 
  • I’ve dealt with depression and lingering self-doubt for much of my life, because of that long-ago bullying. Which gives me great compassion for those who are different or who feel like outsiders. And though I won’t name names, because it is not my story to tell – I can assure them that many of the writers and artists I’m friendly with have experienced either bullying, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, or a combination of those things.
  • I grew up believing that I was not going to survive to adulthood. My parents were into doomsday politics and apocalyptic religion, so whether it was Soviet nukes or Armageddon, we were all going down in flames. Everyone around me—extended family and religious social group—echoed the same fears and beliefs. I was pleasantly surprised to still be alive at age 12, but I didn’t figure it would last. That’s the year I discovered Star Trek (original series) and read my first science fiction book (Destination: Universe by A.E. VanVogt). I still remember the moment when it hit me that other people saw the possibility of a completely different future than the fire and blood I’d been raised to expect. Cataclysmic destruction was not inevitable. I remember lying in the grass in my back yard, book open, tears running down my face when I realized I actually might live long enough to grow up.

Now, some of these people experienced genuine abuse. Most, however, experienced nothing worse than the usual societal disapproval for being weird little kids who couldn’t bother to abide by childhood social norms of behavior, conversation, and hygiene. But regardless, the ironic thing is that by wallowing incessantly in their “oh, poor me, I am so broken and depressed and suicidal” nonsense, they only cement their unhappy fate. Virtually none of them experienced the significant life challenges that Ivan Throne did. Very few of them were likely bullied as relentlessly as I was in my first three years of school, being younger, smarter, more athletic, and considerably smaller than everyone in my elementary school class.

I may, admittedly, have been a little arrogant in failing to conceal my intelligence, my athletic ability, or my interests.

(I couldn’t figure out why John Scalzi was such a broken little creature, given that he wasn’t particularly fat or ugly, and how he was handed educational opportunities of the sort one seldom sees outside of rich families sending their children to boarding schools, until I learned he’d spent a whole school year in a wheelchair hanging out with the school nurse during recess as the result of an accident. That’s where he learned to rely on snark and pretense as a means of psychological self-defense. An unsound body, when combined with a lack of honesty and courage, often produces a withered soul and an unsound mind.)

There is one, and only one, difference in the choice that these pathetic husks of human beings made, and the choice that men like Ivan and I made, when we were children under psychological pressure. We fought back. We never ran from reality. We never broke. We refused to accept our externally imposed fates, we also refused to pretend things were other than they were, and by doing so, we not only changed our fates, we changed who we were. They cringed, they cowered, they ran, and they have never stopped running.

About seven years after graduating from high school, I ran into the one boy who was smaller than I was in junior high in a weight room, a smart kid who also liked to write. We were doubles partners on the JV tennis team in ninth grade. He was still only 5’7″ but was 200 pounds of solid, barrel-chested muscle, and it turned out that he was the reigning state powerlifting champion. I’d added 40 pounds of muscle myself and was a ripped, skin-headed martial artist. We looked at each other and both burst out laughing. “You think we overcompensated a little?” were his first words to me.

The SF-SJWs genuinely can’t understand why their collective disapproval means absolutely nothing to me. They are confused and befuddled when a failure or a rejection fails to dissuade me from looking for another way forward. They can’t figure out why I get up and go back into the fray after I am knocked down. And that tells you everything you need to know, not about me, but about them. They cannot even imagine a scenario where you don’t curl up and die because someone doesn’t like you. They call me “the most despised man in science fiction”, but remember the Third Law of SJW: SJWs always project.

The reason the sad sacks of science fiction despise themselves is not because they have post-traumatic stress disorder or chemical imbalances in their brain or a crippling lack of god-belief. In most cases, those are consequences, not causes. They hate themselves because, knowingly or unknowingly, they harbor contempt for the child they once were. Their works are an endless and futile attempt to replay their childhoods to produce a different outcome.

And instead of humbling themselves, admitting that they are weak, fat, inferior, mentally ill cowards, and taking action to stop being those things, they band together and collectively proclaim that black is white, weak is strong, evil is good, and ugliness is beauty. The light onto which they’re holding is Luciferian, and nothing positive will come of their competition to be the most broken, the most abused, the saddest and least-deserving victim of them all.

“You’re not alone!” they cry. But you are. Everyone is. There comes a critical point in every man’s life when he faces the choice to accept reality and deal with it or deny it and enter a parallel world of self-centered delusion. You know what choice you made then, and you know why.

UPDATE: A reader comments: “My husband had a horrendous childhood. Beatings, starvation, severe neglect, homeless and living on the streets at age eight. He is a very high achiever, the strongest man I know, very happy, and successful. Why? He is a FIGHTER. A bad childhood is not a life sentence to misery.”

In fairness, I know who her husband is and to call him a “fighter” is akin to calling the Joker a guy with a few psychological issues. I like him, and he’s a good man, but on a “don’t mess with this guy” scale ranging from 1 to 10, his rank is “Vladimir Putin having a bad day”.

Childhood adversity will make you weaker or it will make you stronger. The choice is yours.

The petty evil of William F. Buckley

Anonymous Conservative exposes the thought policeman of the conservative establishment to have been a malignant narcissist:

Jonah Goldberg recently said it was time to John Birch the Alt-right. Good luck with that, numbnuts, as an economic apocalypse approaches and the nation finds itself overrun with your Establishment-approved, religion-of-peace amigos. You’ll be lucky to one day escape the mob that is coming yourself. I look on this piece as my get out of jail free card, should I ever have the misfortune to be captured in Jonah’s vicinity.

So I am free to discuss things like this openly now. If the Cuckservative Establishment wants to attack the Alt-right, lets take a look at their saintly standard bearer through the lens of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Our source material will be the piece written by his son in the New York Times. At the time I read it, I was repulsed by what appears to be a case of pretty severe Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Here I will explain why, after quotes from the article.

First is the picture of him. Notice how despite his youth, you can still see the glassy, disconnected eyes. And the sneer of contempt, almost to the point of a growl with an upcurled lip, which is manifest on the left side of his face, and masked on the right side. That facial asymmetry always seems to hold when I see something aberrant. Faces are handed, and the left side almost never hides the demons within as well as the right.

Now the article.

Pup’s self-medicating was, I’d venture, a chemical extension of the control he asserted over every other aspect of his life. The term “control freak” is pejorative. Put it this way: Few great men — and I use the term precisely, for Pup was a great man — do not assert total control over their domains…


He was invariably the sunniest and most pleasant creature in the room. The moods of those in attendance upon him — Mum’s, mainly — did not always match his.


A TV remote control in the hands of an autocrat of the entertainment room becomes a “Star Trek” phaser set on stun. He and Mum might be watching “Murder on the Orient Express” with a half-dozen guests when, just as a key plot point was being introduced, suddenly the screen would fill with a documentary on Che Guevara or the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara…


There, the three of us would eat one of Julian the cook’s delicious meals on trays and watch a movie. I say “a movie,” but “movies” would be more accurate, since several minutes in, without bothering to say, “Let’s watch something else,” he’d simply change the channel. One day, when I was out of town and called to check in, Danny reported, with a somewhat-strained chuckle, “We watched parts of five movies last night…”


Once or twice during the convalescence, I became so splutteringly frustrated after the fourth or fifth channel change that I silently stormed out of the room.

I know what Buckley was doing because I have seen this mind in action. That storming out was what Buckley wanted. Think about it. He was watching those shows. Was he not drawn into them? Was his interest alone not piqued to see the climactic resolution unfold? Was his boredom climaxing at the exact moment everyone else’s interest was maximally invested?

The satisfaction he felt when everyone else was enraged at that critical moment was more pleasurable to him than seeing the plot twists revealed…. Buckley was not a great man. He was, like all narcissists, an insecure, mentally damaged coward, elevated to his position by an establishment that saw him as a useful idiot who would happily suppress the most fierce advocates for freedom, from John Birch to Ayn Rand.

I never, ever liked Buckley’s writing. There was always something that was distinctly off about it to me. There was never any depth or substance to it; there is more meat to a single chapter of Sam Huntington than there is in Buckley’s entire oeuvre. His columns never seemed to hit the target, and his novels were meandering and pointless. Yes, he was intelligent and influential, but always in the most shallow and superficial manner. It is not even remotely surprising to me that the establishment he constructed and policed has not long survived his death. In a different situation, he would have been a dictator, and probably have met with much the same fate as a Mussolini.

Read the whole thing. The incident with the boat at Christmas makes it very clear that there was definitely something seriously psychologically wrong with the man. He was basically the real-life version of Ricky Bobby’s father in Talladega Nights, if the father had punched out the waitress and burned down the Applebee’s instead of just mouthing off to her and being thrown out.

AC explains the driving motivation of the intelligent malignant narcissist:  This is the cerebral narcissist’s dream – tangible proof which they can handle in their brain, that everyone else is an idiot, and they are the smart one. It relieves the great insecurity which drives them unrelentingly to try and one-up everyone else.

This is why I don’t worry about to those who can admit that they have failed, admit that they are wrong, and don’t feel the need to inappropriately flaunt their intelligence at all times, but keep a very wary eye on those who are never wrong, always win, and claim even the most abject defeat to be a victory in disguise. They’re not all malignant narcissists, they may only be garden-variety Gamma secret kings, but in no circumstances can any of them be trusted in any way.

Notice how often Christopher Buckley tried to reason with his father, to absolutely no avail. That’s an unwinnable scenario with malignant narcissists, it is the Kobayashi Maru. Don’t argue with them, don’t try to correct them, don’t try to fix things for them, don’t enable them in any way, just keep your distance, keep them out of your life, and leave them to their delusional hellholes.

Of Alt-West and Alt-White

The question is not whether there are at least two distinct branches of the Alt-Right already or not, but whether the Alt-White branch can get its swastika panties sufficiently unbunched to cooperate with the Alt-West and the Alt-Lite in the pursuit of its stated objectives, or if it is more interested in competitive navel-gazing and purity-spiraling.

After a few run-ins with true-believing Stormfronters who have been Alt-Right since the distant dawn of primordial identity politics in 2010, both here and on Twitter, it has become abundantly clear that the combination of a legitimate fear of entryism and an understandable case of spotlight envy, the Alt-White is having some serious trouble dealing with the inevitable problems of success and popularity.

It’s rather like a company that has sales that are rapidly growing. The increase in demand for your products is great, but it is still a real problem. How are you going to get the additional products made? How are you going to pay for them? Are these new customers going to stick around or will they disappear before you can even expand your manufacturing capacity? These are good problems to have, but they are definitely problems that will need to be addressed.

First, is a distinction really necessary? Yes, without question. This should be obvious, since Alt-White, Alt-West, and Alt-Light are all different strains of identity-based thought that are all also observably distinct from mainstream conservatism or libertarianism. In this sense, all three are ALTernatives to the traditional RIGHT. Hence the Spencer-coined term.

Second, should all three be considered Alt-Right? Here I would argue no, that while it is reasonable to describe both Alt-White and Alt-West as Alt-Right, the Alt-Lite should not be. The reason is that while both Alt-White and Alt-West sign on to the greater part of the 16 Points of the Alt-Right I’ve laid out, and which most Alt-Rightists have generally endorsed, the various people who make up the Alt-Lite are all over the place with regards to most of them.

The Alt-Lite, in other words, is the larval form of the Alt-Right, which means that they are not, practically speaking, Alt-Right in any meaningful or functional sense. They are merely those still undergoing the intellectual transition that most Alt-Rightists have made, at one point or another. Alt-Lite is a transitional stage, not an end point.

By contrast, the Alt-White and Alt-West are both destinations. Once one gravitates towards one branch or the other, or as may be the case, is directed there by virtue of one’s identity, one is simply not going to eventually move towards the other one. This leads us to the third question, what are the key differences between the Alt-White and the Alt-West. The following are my observations; I am quite willing to be corrected by someone who can speak more credibly for the Alt-White.

  1. Alt-White is for whites only. Alt-West is pan-racial and pan-national, which should not be confused with being multicultural or equalitarian or pro-diversity in the egalitarian sense.
  2. Alt-White is primarily concerned with white nationalism, and secondarily concerned with European nationalisms. Within the Alt-White, there is already a discussion concerning what the difference between a generic white nationalism and the specific European nationalisms are; I suspect there will eventually be a further distinction between American and European branches of the Alt-White. While the Alt-West supports white nationalism, that is not its sole concern, as it supports all nationalism, European or otherwise.
  3. Alt-White is neutral to hostile on Christianity. Alt-West is strongly pro-Christian, as it believes Christianity to be one of the three pillars of Western Civilization aka the historical Christendom. Pro-Christian includes, but does not require, actually being a Christian.
  4. Alt-White is neutral to hostile on Israel. Alt-West is pro-Israel, as it supports all nationalist homelands.
  5. Alt-White is hostile to very hostile to all Jews everywhere. Alt-West is friendly to Israeli Jews while hostile to globalist Jews and anti-nationalist Jews.
  6. Alt-White has a romantic view of National Socialism. Alt-West regards it as a suicidally stupid but semiotically useful form of German nationalism.
  7. Alt-White is neutral to pro-white imperialism. Alt-West is anti-imperialism, as it regards imperalism as being societally enervating and self-destructive.

As you can see, within the context of both the 16 Points and the grand political spectrum, Alt-White and Alt-West are largely in accord. They generally share a philosophy and a direction, but their priorities and perspectives are different. More importantly, with the possible exception of Christianity in the long term, there is very little reason for conflict between Alt-White and Alt-West, indeed, the distinction between the two eliminates the Alt-White’s primary objection to the Alt-West, which is the possibility of  being sidelined by the media and by the larger potential appeal of the Alt-West.

Some have accused me, and Milo, and several others, of wanting to assume the mantle of leading the Alt-Right. That is the exact opposite of the truth. In fact, one personal benefit of articulating the distinction between the two primary branches of the Alt-Right is that it makes it clear that a) there can be no unitary leader, and b) even if there could be, that unitary leader could not possibly be me due to my identity as an American Indian and member of La Raza.

The more significant benefit is to quell the fears of the Alt-White that they will be sidelined by their more numerous allies. But the Alt-West needs nothing from the Alt-White, and by establishing a separate identity, a much broader spectrum of members are made possible while respecting the rigid borders of the Alt-White. Regardless, the simple fact of the matter is that the Alt-White is not the only alternative to mainstream conservatism.

There are much bigger battles ahead than settling the question of whether Christianity is a necessary component of Western Civilization or not. Because we know the white race is absolutely a necessary component of it, and that is why, whether one is inclined towards the Alt-White or the Alt-West, every member of the Alt-Right who values both whites and the West has immediate and mid-range objectives remain exactly the same.

As before, this is not intended to be a definitive delineation of the differences between the two branches of the Alt-Right, but the starting point for an intelligent discussion. Keep it civil and substantive as those more interested in posturing will be spammed. As for those who will claim that Alt-West, Alt-White, and Alt-Lite are not genuine “things”, keep in mind that as a political taxonomist, I am creating nothing. I am merely describing what observably already exists.

The growth of the Alt-Lite

The power of the Alt-Right message can be seen in those who are rejecting conservatism, classical liberalism, and other pure ideologies in favor of watered-down versions of the Alt-Right that Richard Spencer and others have collectively labeled the Alt-Lite. This is one thoughtful Alt-Lite piece by a self-declared Liberal Christian Nationalist who has, in his own words, embraced identity politics.

I think I am a “Liberal Christian Nationalist,” and, now that Christians arguably have no real influence in this country – just as they, particularly nationalists, have little influence in Europe (first see here ; then here and here) – this shouldn’t scare anyone.[i] I don’t expect to get too many of my fellow Americans to identify with me in this, nor does it mean I expect to see a LCN party arise. I suspect that the list that I have put together below though – explaining what I mean by “Liberal Christian Nationalism”, might be of more use to countries who are young when it comes to their Christian commitment.

Please note that these points deal with issues of “race” in some detail, since that is, I think, always the elephant in the room and demands thoughtful engagement. Further, in full disclosure, I put together this 32 point list in part in response to a list that the “Alt Right” leader, Vox Day (author of The Irrational Atheist), put together.

Before jumping into my list, a key point: in my view, the Leftism of today includes many who would consider themselves on the political right. Their philosophy is ultimately deferential to the language used in the 1992 Planned Parenthood vs. Casey decision of the Supreme Court: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” (of course, logic tells us that “private beliefs” will ultimately only be permitted to be translated into action for some persons – others’ actions will inevitably be determined to be “out of bounds” – see below). A person who is conservative, on the other hand – including those who find room to account for the importance of identity in politics – would continue to agree with the words of the late Russel Kirk – or, perhaps, at least want to agree with him: “[conservatives are] all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.” “Conservatives” who say that what Kirk says is “no longer true” or irrelevant are being anything but conservative. After all, if what Kirk says it is no longer true, how was it ever more than an illusion to begin with (given that he speaks of the words “constant” and “enduring” as if these terms mean something)?

My list:

  1. The history of the world teaches us that the separation of religion and politics is ultimately untenable. Ironically, the possibility of conceiving of a “separation of church and state” could have only taken place in a nation that is largely made up of an influenced by Christians (“give to God what is God’s, to Caesar what is Caesar’s”), who justifiably, at their best, have a reputation for both being simple, humble, content, and not apt to glorify strength.
  2. The Bible is the Word of God. Whoever you are, Jesus Christ is your Creator, your God, your King. This is what Christians have always believed and taught. It is only for the sake of conversation and common ground with the world – all of whom we are to love with Christ’s love – that we might start by talking about how the Bible “contains God’s Word”, “contains the Gospel”, how Jesus is “our God,” or how we consider the Bible to be authoritative.
  3. If “true patriotism” means “freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth,” as Eleanor Roosevelt said, one should consider supporting Christian missionaries who share the Gospel of Jesus Christ – His defeat of sin, death and the devil for us through the (unlikely) victory at the cross vindicated by the resurrection – out of sincere conviction and not with any colonial-esque designs.
  4. Those countries who have attained a high level of political liberty, including freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion – as well as greater effectiveness, mobility, and choice when it comes to economic issues (made possible by increased trust) – are nations that have been greatly influenced by Christianity.
  5. Greco-Roman culture, as well as the Renaissance and Enlightenment which drew from it, forced Western forms of Christianity to become much more reflective and nuanced in their understanding of biblical truths. Christianity also seeks to appreciate what is good, true, and beautiful from all cultures (see Philippians 4:8).
  6. Christians are first and foremost citizens of heaven, not earth. In, but not of the world, their “dual ethnicity” means that they belong first to the kingdom of heaven, and are members of “God’s chosen ethnos” (I Peter 2:9). Though all are one “in Adam,” God has, post-fall, also ordained a diversity of nations (see Acts 17:26), from whom He will obtain worship (Rev. 7:9).
  7. Biblically, earthly nations are inseparable from the concept of “ethnos,” from which we get “ethnicity”. In like fashion “genos”, from where we get “genes,” can be translated as offspring, family, race, nation, kind, or even sex. We see that these terms involve notions of blood and parentage, even if “ethnos” is more closely connected than “genos” with our notions of culture.
  8. Ultimately, the Church is a new Nation that re-unites, by faith in Christ, persons not just from this or that race, tribe, or nation, but from the entire human family – making one Nation, or, more accurately, Kingdom, to whom all the earthly nations will stream in the life to come, “Kingdom come”.
  9. The idea to rather sharply distinguish “church and state” comes from Jesus Christ Himself. He said to “give to God what is God’s and Caesar what is Caesar’s”. It is desirable that the Church and earthly nations support one another even as it is also desirable that each stay out of the other’s core business – the Church forgiving sin and giving eternal life, nations protecting their people while seeking truth and justice.
  10. It may indeed be better to be governed by a wise Turk than a stupid Christian (mis-attributed to the 16th Church Reformer Martin Luther, though it might seem to sum up his thinking well) though even with this consideration (which seems not to be mindful about continuity), the ideal or preferred persons to lead a nation are, in general, Christians with political gifts – not the leaders of the Church, but Christians nonetheless.
  11. In contrast to some, there is nothing in the Christian religion that demands we, in our earthly sojourn, must have Christian rulers or even a certain kind of government. If a beloved Christian chieftain or king were to step down to establish a democracy, even with the caveat that the elected ruler must be Christian (e.g. “firm Nicean”) – or at least persons sympathetic to Christianity – it is reasonable to debate whether or not this would, generally speaking, be a responsible move.
  12. Nevertheless, there is no theological reason, in theory, that a Democratic or Republican (understood classically, not in terms of the American political parties) Liberal Christian Nation should not be desirable – along with the desire to keep it thusly (Ben Franklin: “A Republic – if you can keep it” – see here).
  13. But if this is the case, here, a “balance of powers” is only one part of the puzzle. Collective theological – and hence cultural – formation must be seen as being absolutely critical: in order to have equality under the law, real respect for the dignity and rights of each individual, a wise degree of cultural tolerance, etc., one must, simply, have Christian teaching. “Liberal Christianity” and their progressive allies are, in fact, parasitical here (see here).
  14. As “childless men who had forgotten their childhoods” (Bertand de Jovenel), Hobbes and Locke (largely followed by Leo Strauss, the father of “neo-conservatism”) believed the false philosophy that we are by nature “free and independent,” naturally “ungoverned and even non-relational.” (see here) Hypothesizing “states” (personal and corporate!) that are devoid of nationality, ethnicity, and religion is simply unreasonable, and can’t not result in expressions of social Darwinism, glorifying the powerful and attractive, and impatient with, and dismissive towards (or worse) “losers”.
  15. When it comes to the sexes, the Left has, in essence, rejected fatherhood as a category. Might not the rejection of the notion of “fatherland” by related? (this article is worth pondering) America cannot be “an idea,” however much that statement might force us to consider its seemingly unique qualities.

The list actually consists of 32 points, but you can read the whole thing there. Unlike the intellectually autistic spergs of the Alt-White, I welcome the rapid expansion of the Alt-Lite, as it drives even more nails in the coffin of ineffective ideology politics in general and American conservatism in particular.

Refueling the tank

This essay by Scott Adams struck a familiar chord:

How do I know Trump has mastered the skill of converting humiliation into energy? The signs are all there. For example…

Trump has entered one high-risk business after another, guaranteeing that he would experience a large number of setbacks, failures, and humiliations. People don’t run toward humiliation unless they know they can convert that negative energy to fuel. When you see someone succeed across multiple unrelated fields, that’s often a sign of a Master Persuader who feeds on both success and failure. You are watching Trump do exactly that, right in front of your eyes. He has converted every “gaffe” into news coverage. He eats bad news and converts it into fuel.

Many of you have watched me do the same thing. You’ve watched as I jumped fields from corporate America to cartooning. Then I became an author of business-related books. I opened two restaurants that didn’t work out. I tried lots of stuff that failed miserably. Now I’m talking about the presidential election. What do all of those things have in common?

I risked public humiliation in each case.

And in each case, lots of people told me “Keep your day job.” On a typical day, dozens of strangers insult my body, my personality, my brain, my integrity, and lots more. Like Trump, I consume it as fuel. And it is a learned skill.

You might have noticed that both Trump and I are quick to attack anyone who attacks us. Observers tell me I shouldn’t do that, because it makes me appear thin-skinned. Observers tell Trump the same thing. But observers are missing one important thing: We use the critics to refuel

If you were an alien from another planet, and you observed a lion killing a gazelle, you might think that lion was angry at its prey. You might think the lion was insulted that the gazelle was using its watering hole. What did the gazelle do to deserve that treatment? Is the lion being thin-skinned?

Trust me when I tell you that sometimes the lion is just eating.

Not long after the release of Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg asked me how I handled the constant criticism to which we were both subjected. He tended to find it enervating, and wondered how I seemed to be energized by it. I explained that as a naturally lazy individual from a wealthy family, I needed a pretty good reason to put down a book and get off the couch, and the hatred of people I dislike served as a sufficiently motivating factor.

Disturbed put it best: “open up your hate and let it flow into me.”

I don’t think I’ve missed a single day blogging since I decided VP had to pass up Whatever in terms of traffic. It now has 5x more daily traffic, but I won’t be content until I also have more Twitter followers and more book sales than McRapey. The object is not to win, but to vanquish.

(This may amuse only me, but perhaps you recall Scalzi’s false claims of having 50,000 readers per day. Now, readers aren’t pageviews, so it’s not a precise comparison, but VP hasn’t had a single day as low as 50,000 pageviews in more than six weeks. 63,078 is the daily nadir in that time frame.)

Carnegie seeks embarrassment, Trump seeks failure, Adams seeks humiliation, and I seek hate, but it’s all the same thing: converting negative energy into fuel. When people ask me where I find the energy to do the various things I do every day, well, there are Saudi-sized oil fields of hatred out there.

Now, obviously I am far less successful than Trump or Adams. So, perhaps humiliation is a better goad than hatred. Or perhaps they convert negative energy more efficiently than I do. Or perhaps they’re just more fortunate. But regardless, it should be apparent that if you can teach yourself to feed on your critics rather than fear them, you will likely find the consequences to be beneficial. And, of course, to feed on them, you need to do something that inspires them to exist.

The Flight 93 election, revisited

Publius Decius Mus is taking a considerable amount of flak from conservatives because he is directly over the target, which is the staunchly pusillanimous way in which they have betrayed America and Americans for at least 50 years, and the way some of them are still trying to do so:

Conservatives have shouted since the beginning of Trump’s improbable rise: He’s not one of us! He is not conservative! And, indeed, in many ways, Trump is downright liberal. You might think that would make him more acceptable to the Left. But no. As “compassionate conservatism” did nothing to blunt leftist hatred of George W. Bush, neither do Trump’s quasi-liberal economic positions. In fact, they hate Trump much more. Trump is not conservative enough for the conservatives but way too conservative for the Left, yet somehow they find common cause. Earlier I posited that the reason is Trump’s position on immigration. Let me add two others.

The first is simply that Trump might win. He is not playing his assigned role of gentlemanly loser the way McCain and Romney did, and may well have tapped into some previously untapped sentiment that he can ride to victory. This is a problem for both the Right and the Left. The professional Right (correctly) fears that a Trump victory will finally make their irrelevance undeniable. The Left knows that so long as Republicans kept playing by the same rules and appealing to the same dwindling base of voters, there was no danger. Even if one of the old breed had won, nothing much would have changed, since their positions on the most decisive issues were effectively the same as the Democrats and because they posed no serious challenge to the administrative state.

Which points to the far more important reason. I urge readers to go back through John Marini’s argument, to which I cannot do anything close to full justice. Suffice to say here, the current governing arrangement of the United States is rule by a transnational managerial class in conjunction with the administrative state. To the extent that the parties are adversarial at the national level, it is merely to determine who gets to run the administrative state for four years. Challenging the administrative state is out of the question. The Democrats are united on this point. The Republicans are at least nominally divided. But those nominally opposed (to the extent that they even understand the problem, which is: not much) are unwilling or unable to actually do anything about it. Are challenges to the administrative state allowed only if they are guaranteed to be ineffectual? If so, the current conservative movement is tailor-made for the task. Meanwhile, the much stronger Ryan wing of the Party actively abets the administrative state and works to further the managerial class agenda.

Trump is the first candidate since Reagan to threaten this arrangement. To again oversimplify Marini (and Aristotle), the question here is: who rules? The many or the few? The people or the oligarchs? Our Constitution says: the people are sovereign, and their rule is mediated through representative institutions, limited by written Constitutional norms. The administrative state says: experts must rule because various advances (the march of history) have made governing too complicated for public deliberation, and besides, the unwise people often lack knowledge of their own best interests even on rudimentary matters. When the people want something that they shouldn’t want or mustn’t have, the administrative state prevents it, no matter what the people vote for. When the people don’t want something that the administrative state sees as salutary or necessary, it is simply imposed by fiat.

Don’t want more immigration? Too bad, we know what’s best. Think bathrooms should be reserved for the two biological sexes? Too bad, we rule. And so on and on.

To all the “conservatives” yammering about my supposed opposition to Constitutional principle (more on that below) and who hate Trump, I say: Trump is mounting the first serious national-political defense of the Constitution in a generation. He may not see himself in those terms. I believe he sees himself as a straightforward patriot who just wants to do what is best for his country and its people. Whatever the case, he is asserting the right of the sovereign people to make their government do what they want it to do, and not do things they don’t want it to do, in the teeth of determined opposition from a managerial class and administrative state that want not merely different policies but above all to perpetuate their own rule.

If the Constitution has any force or meaning, then “We the People” get to decide not merely who gets to run the administrative state—which, whatever the outcome, will always continue on the same path—more fundamentally, we get to decide what policies we want and which we don’t.

Conservatism as we have known it since Reagan is dead. Whether the Alt Right or NeoTrumpism or something else will ascend in its place is presently unknown, but we can be fairly certain that conservatives will never win another national election, thanks to the demographic transformation they supported, and, in many cases, still support.

Shed no tears and spare no pity for them. Like every ideology that stands in opposition to observable reality, their eventual irrelevance is assured, it is merely a question of time.

The importance of rhetoric

A few facts:

  • 78% of Clinton supporters don’t believe that blacks are less intelligent than whites. 
  • 68% of Clinton supporters don’t believe blacks are less law-abiding than whites.
Wow, they’re all pretty stupid, right? No, because intelligence has NOTHING to do with it. Greater intelligence just means that an individual has an enhanced capability for rationalizing his belief in even more ridiculous falsehoods.

After all:

  • 68% of Trump supporters don’t believe that blacks are less intelligent than whites.
  • 53% of Trump supporters don’t believe blacks are less law-abiding than whites.
Let’s throw in a few more facts.
  • Average white American IQ: 103
  • Average black American IQ: 85
  • Average sub-Saharan African IQ: 70
  • The 12% of the male US population that is black provides 37% of the male prison population.
  • Blacks commit violent crimes at 8.5 times the rate that whites do.

In other words, facts are observably incapable of persuading MOST of the US population. Their minds are not changed by the receipt of new information, regardless of how accurate it may be. As much as 80 percent of the population is totally impervious to observation, statistics, eyewitness testimony, genetic science, and documentary evidence. Considering their ability to resist observable reality, how susceptible do you think they are likely to be to logic and abstract reason?

I conclude that less than five percent of the population is even subject to persuasion by logic and less than two percent are reliably capable of being persuaded by it. And if these facts is insufficient to persuade you that dialectic is an intrinsically limited tool that must always be supplimented by rhetoric to be generally effective, well, welcome to the 98 percent.

Of faith and fairy tales

John C. Wright considers the charge that Christianity is nothing more than a fairy tale:

There are those who call Christian faith a fairy tale. I assume such scoffers are not old and wise enough to believe in fairies.

To them, I give the answer of that most excellent marshwiggle and insightful theologian, Puddleglum: Suppose my account is a fairy tale. Your account is not even that.

Let us contrast and compare the Christian fairy tale with the tale told by witches both white and green, both modern and ancient.

One modern account of the world consists of little more than saying “Life is a bitch, and then you die, and in the end nobody lives happily ever after. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

Well, says I, if you actually believed your account, the wise thing to do is to swallow cold poison and jump into the sea: so the fact that you are still here hints that at some level you know your account is unsatisfactory: a poorly constructed story, pointless, plotless, and with a weak ending. It is not a tale at all, but a complaint.

Another account, this one with considerably more pedigree, says, “We are all just naked apes or meat machines: our souls are made of atoms blown together by the twelve winds with no more purpose and meaning than the shape of the sand dune: we are helpless and without free will, victims of blind evolutionary forces and blind historical forces. Atop the Holy Mountain no gods dance, and no burning bushes speak. Death is dreamless sleep and soft oblivion. Therefore let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

This is a poor story: a tale of despair, a myth to justify hedonism.

A nobler version of this same account says, “Man is a rational animal, capable of moral reasoning, creativity, productiveness, love. Man is heroic. Therefore let us live rationally working with mind and heart and soul to produce such works of art and science as befits so dignified a creature: let each man to live for himself alone, a paragon of self-reliance  each man in the solitary but invulnerable tower of his self-made soul, never demanding nor making any selfess sacrifice. Nor hopes nor fears of after-lives or nether-worlds need detain us: Therefore let us think, and work, and triumph, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Entropy triumphs over all, a nightfall of endless darkness and infinite cold.”

This is a poor story: vanity, vainglory, and blindness to the pain and misery of life. The pretense that bad things never happen for no reason to good people is a very thin pretense: since the days of Job, we have all known better. This is a tale of vainglory.

He is correct, though, to conclude that there is no better answer than the marshwiggle’s. We choose the fairy tale regardless. And there is nothing in your moralities, nothing in your philosophies, nothing in your sciences that can provide one single legitimate reason to criticize that choice.

“Marital rape” does not, and cannot, exist

Judgy Bitch considers my debate with Louise Mensch on the matter, thinks everything through and concludes that my position is the correct one:

I think we have to clearly distinguish between having a right and exercising that right. Under the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, every American has the right to keep and bear arms. Lots of Americans choose not to exercise that right. They still have the right, whether they use it or not. The question under consideration in this particular debate is whether marriage confers consent to sex that cannot be withdrawn except by the dissolution of the marriage.

If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have sided with Mensch. If I say no to my husband, I expect him to respect that, although if I’m being honest, I would be very insulted and sulky if he rejected my advances. In the 18 years we’ve been together, I do not recall him ever rejecting me, and I can count the number of times I’ve absolutely refused to have sex with him on one hand.  Pondering the idea more carefully, I have now come to the conclusion that Day is correct – rape cannot exist within a marriage. If marital rape is a thing, then 100% of the sex I have ever had with my husband has been rape.

I have never obtained his consent and he has never obtained mine.

Consent is assumed as a basic function of marriage. Consent to sex is part of what marriage is. Mensch acknowledges the general obligation spouses have to one another to have sex, but refuses blanket consent. I think the most interesting part of the discussion surrounds the use of force and violence. Marriage confers the right to have sex with your spouse, but it does not confer any right to assault your spouse. By what means could a spouse force sex that was not wanted without the use of force?

It’s not an accident that the same ideology that has expressly stated “all sex is rape” is the same one behind the push to create the oxymoronic legal concept of “marital rape”.

If they could, feminists would outlaw both marriage and normal sex. Marital rape is an effective way for them to attack both.

Alt-White and Alt-West

One of the chief pieces of evidence concerning the fact that #GamerGate was a primarily left-wing group is the way in which many of the supporters of the #AltRight are observably ignorant of the basic tenets of the most successful anti-SJW, anti-media action since the cultural war began. Every group and every movement has its tone and purity police, and usually, their activities are totally counterproductive. Consider this observation from the central rallying point of the GamerGate left, KotakuInAction:

I’m finding it hard to believe this needs to be said, but since it appears that Mark Kern (AKA Grummz) got mobbed, from within GG, by tone-policing PC assholes who took umbrage with him referring to Nyberg as “he” instead of “she”, to the point that he decided to quit GG, losing us a valuable ally and supporter, it would seem that this indeed needs to be said: Political correctness and tone-policing have no place in GamerGate.

Now, this doesn’t mean that entryism is not a serious potential problem or that there are those individuals who are best kept at arms-length, or further, for one reason or another. But in general, the tone and purity police are a much bigger problem in the early stages.

Therefore, in the interest of educating those interested in learning the tactics of those who have successfully used them in the past, it may be useful to read this document, which was widely accepted throughout GamerGate and helps explain how we successfully addressed the problem.

All of the following are counterproductive and damage ourselves ONLY:
No objectives, no goals, no demands, no philosophies, no lists.
  • It screws up the framing of the issue by forcing us to focus on specific issues.
  • The corrupt journos will adhere to the letter of the list and not the spirit. They will find a way to weasel around them.
  • The second nobody is looking, they’ll go back to being dishonest.
  • This idea was put forth by a well-meaning PR person, not someone experienced in consumer activity. PR is the journo’s game. Not ours.
  • It divides us into the goals we each specifically want and we don’t all want the same things. What appeases you will not appease another etc.
  • Demands are things that terrorists make. We are a consumer revolt. We are not violent. We are not underhanded. We are not a political movement.
  • Philosophies are for philosophers, not consumer revolts. We don’t need philosophy to obtain the moral high ground, the opposition has already given it to us. We have no benefit in philosophies.
  • Goals are for games, not a consumer revolt.
  • Objectives are for military operations, not a consumer revolt.
  • Lists are for nerds.
  • It is true that it may increase our numbers (in an absolute sense, but we’re still divided over the goals) because people have specific things to champion. However, this will bring us fence-sitters and those of weak will and not people that will do the work of writing emails and investigation of corruption. If they aren’t invested on the merits, they aren’t invested and thus are not helpful.
  • We do not need clear end points. If people are discouraged by a perceived lack of progress, take a break. This is an extended and long-term approach and you must take breaks. If you need specific goals for yourself, participate 2 or 3 days a week. Phrase it in those terms. Creating goals is not necessary.
  • It does not help people get into this. What does help people get into this is a more coherent and concise set of facts that they can evaluate and come to their own conclusions.
  • Numbers are not an argument. Facts create numbers. Numbers don’t necessarily create facts.
  • Phrasing these goals incorrectly will put them as lines in the sand. We cannot change them once they’re satisfied. We cannot move goalposts like they do.
No narrative changing.
  • As we are a consumer revolt and not a political movement, we do not need a narrative.
  • Narratives are for PR. PR is the journo’s game. Not ours.
  • We let the opposition change the narrative for themselves as they’ve done time and again for the last month.
  • We will go as far politically as we must (as we’ve been forced to do so far), but have no inherent desire to do so.
  • If a person is energized by narrative, they are in the wrong place. Narratives change and we would lose them when it changes anyway. Additionally, it’s unlikely that people that aren’t participating on the merits will do the requisite work involved.
  • We are about facts, logic, and reason. A narrative is a way of spinning these. We have no spin. Only truth.
  • We are actually inclusive and this has been demonstrated already. There is no need to push this or any message.
No leaders.
  • This is a 100% shill idea put forward by the opposition to make it easy to play the identity game. This is their bread and butter and they will co-opt or ruin anything that they can get their hands on.
  • We’ve lasted for a month and counting with no real dictators. We should continue this trend.
  • There are currently no weak points to attack.
  • As attacks against individuals intensify (people have lost jobs, been sent mafia-esque messages in the mail, and have been severely harassed for being involved), it’s clear that giving them heads that are more important than others is a bad idea.
  • Even discussing who you would pick implies some kind of extra importance. We do not want this. We’re all in this together.

    This is a section of a longer document, and was conceived as a comprehensive rebuttal to help GamerGaters address a specific type of shill known as The Changer. Other shills to watch out for included The Fear Monger, The Defeatist, The Dismissive, The False Flag, The Politico, The Discreditor, The Misdirector, The Uncertain, The Slider, and The Self-Shiller; the longer document recommended specific responses to deal with each of them. It may strike you as paranoid, but I personally witnessed multiple shills of each of these types, as SJWs repeatedly tried to infiltrate and redirect what, despite outsiders’ best efforts to categorize it as a hate group, a terrorist group, and a Twitter-based charade, remained a consumer revolt focused tightly on the corrupt games media.

    Now, obviously not all of these lessons are applicable to the #AltRight, because the #AltRight is a political movement, not a consumer revolt, it is positive and prescriptive in nature as opposed to being intrinsically defensive like #GamerGate, and it is addressing a very wide range of societal and historical issues instead of being obsessively focused on a single issue and industry at a specific point in time.

    Nevertheless, it is clear that there is an intrinsic tension within the Alt-Right, which is not necessarily a bad thing. On the one side is the Alt-White, which is pure white nationalist and predominantly pagan or atheist. This could be thought of as the NPI or Spencerian Alt-Right. On the other is the Alt-West, which is omni-nationalist and pro-Christian. I suspect Jared Taylor and RamZPaul are more of this persuasion, but I could be wrong. Regardless, it is the branch in which I would place myself. All of the 16 Points of the Alt-Right with which even Richard Spencer himself only has a few quibbles, can reasonably be considered an Alt-West perspective.

    But perhaps rather than thinking of them as branches, it is more helpful to think of them as roots, each being sustained by different pools, supporting the same glorious tree of Western Civilization. Because it is vital to understand that for the Alt-Right to be successful over time, Alt-White and Alt-West must continue to cooperate, refrain from internecine conflict, and continue to stand by each other in the face of the coming media assaults in the same way that GamerGate/KiA and GamerGate/chan did. (And believe me, the conceptual spectrum of the Alt-Right is CONSIDERABLY more narrow than that of GamerGate. Since they were able to coexist and cooperate, we definitely can.) Any claims to be the One True Strain of the Alt-Right are spurious and should be rejected by all sides, as anyone who subscribes to what Lawrence Murray has laid out as the Alt-Right’s big tent is correctly characterized, at the very least, as an ally of the Alt-Right.

    Besides, as we all know, the only true apotheosis of Pepe is Kek.

    It is worse than a waste of time, it is totally counterproductive to shoot at allies. In GamerGate, we had a simple and straightforward response to the shills, tone police, and self-appointed purity police who repeatedly attempted to redirect our efforts away from the primary target of the game journos: SHUT UP AND EMAIL. I suggest that both branches of the Alt-Right, Alt-White and Alt-West, would do very well to adopt a similar policy, especially as various shills do their best to divide and conquer. We would be foolish to do as the Left does, and spend vast quantities of time and effort seeking out and denouncing splittists, reactionaries, and false consciousnesses.

    SHUT UP AND SHOOT LEFT.

    Remember, it’s all very well to get excited about the fact that the media is paying attention to the Alt-Right, but never forget that the reason they are doing so is in order to discredit, disqualify, and destroy it and everyone who is associated with it. Don’t help them do it. The media game is to anoint and behead leaders, and they will always attempt to redefine you in the process, as Betsy Woodruff demonstrates at the Daily Beast:

    So the Alt-Right—helmed by the trio who gathered at The Willard on Friday—is the most extreme example of a shift on the American right: away from a nostalgic conservative focus on restoring the values of the Founders, and towards a forward-focused nationalism that prioritizes drastic limits on immigration and open hostility to globalism.

    But if that forward-focused nationalism sounds good to you, then regardless of whether you are more Alt-White or Alt-West, you are at the very least sympathetic to the Alt-Right.