Tag: politics

A failure of leadership

This is what happens when you buy into the tolerance trap and permit the lavender mafia entrance into your organization:

Employees and volunteers at Mozilla – the organisation which promotes open source software such as its Firefox browser – have called for new chief executive Brendan Eich to stand down because of his donations to political campaigns to ban gay marriage.

This week Mozilla named Brendan Eich as its new chief executive, following the resignation of Gary Kovacs which was announced in April last year. Eich was previously Mozilla’s chief technology officer and has a long history with the group dating back to before its formation from Netscape, having worked on the Navigator browser in the 90s and creating JavaScript in a marathon, ten-day programming session in 1995.

The controversy stems from a $1,000 donation he made in 2008 to support California’s Proposition 8, which opposed gay marriage. The donation was listed in a public database with Mozilla appearing next to Eich’s name as his employer. It caused controversy in the technology industry when it was uncovered in 2012.

Eich posted on his own blog to “express my sorrow at having caused pain” and promised an “active commitment to equality” at Mozilla. “I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion,” he wrote.

But employees were unconvinced. Chris McAvoy, who leads Mozilla’s Open Badges project, took to Twitter last night to call for the new chief executive to stand down and said that he had been “disapointed” by his promotion. 

Eich is in over his head and clearly has no idea what he is dealing with here. He committed a major blunder with that statement; it’s rather like watching a gamma male shot down by a woman respond by supplicating even harder.

What he should have done is fired everyone who called upon him to resign and announced that anyone who would permit their political ideology to interfere with their work at Mozilla or Mozilla’s internal affairs would be fired. That would have brought the matter to a speedy close and prevented similar outbreaks of political insubordination. Instead, he poured gasoline on the fire by showing that he is vulnerable to ideological pressure.

When confronted by a pressure group, one should never apologize and never back down. Confront every challenger outside the organization and crush every challenger inside it. People respect strength and confidence in a leader, even when they disagree with him, because at least he shows that he is decisive and is capable of providing direction. Ironically, in his inept response to the attacks on him, Eich has shown that he is unfit for leadership because he is fundamentally a follower.

What he should have said is: “Like everyone else at Mozilla, I am free to donate to any political organization or cause I choose. It is no one’s business here to tell me to whom I can and cannot donate my money, in the past or in the future. I have donated another $10,000 to [some anti-homogamy outfit], fired Mr. McAvoy for cause, and I will fire any other Mozilla employee or volunteer who publicly demands that this organization to cater to his personal political or ideological beliefs instead of pursuing our corporate objectives.”

The Sad Puppy Hugo Slate

Larry Correia recommends the following slate to the registered Hugo voters:

Best Novel

Warbound, the Grimnoir Chronicles – Larry Correia – Baen

A Few Good Men – Sarah Hoyt – Baen

Novella

“The Butcher of Khardov” – Dan Wells – Skull Island Expeditions

“The Chaplain’s Legacy” – Brad Torgersen – Analog

Novellete

“The Exchange Officers” – Brad Torgersen – Analog

“Opera Vita Aeterna” – Vox Day – The Last Witchking

Best Fanzine

Elitist Book Reviews – Steve Diamond

Best Editor Long Form

Toni Weisskopf

Best Editor Short Form

Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Campbell Award

Marko Kloos

Frank Chadwick

It should be interesting to see how this all turns out. But after John Scalzi – how entirely unsurprising – laid the groundwork for the open politicization of the Hugo Award, it was inevitable that what had always been done quietly behind closed doors would come out in the open.

In addition to the Sad Puppy slate I am adding the following works:

Best Short Story
Port Call – Michael Z. Williamson – Baen
The Krumhorn and Misericorde – Dave Freer – Baen
Dog’s Body – Sarah A. Hoyt – Baen
Failsafe – Karen Bovenmyer – Iron Dragon Books

Best Related Work
Writing Down the Dragon – Tom Simon – Bondwine Books
On Training for War – Tom Kratman – Baen
A Terrible Thing to Lose:Zombie Science and Science Fiction in John Ringo’s
Under a Graveyard Sky – Tedd Roberts – Baen

Best Professional Artist
Kirk DouPonce

The problem of engagement

Toni Weisskopf, the Baen Books editor and one of the voices of sanity in traditional SF/F publishing, provides her perspective on the inevitability of war between the rabbits of Pink SF/F and the rationalists of Blue SF/F in a guest post at Sarah’s place:

The latest fooforaws in the science fiction world have served to highlight the vast cultural divide we are seeing in the greater American culture. SF, as always, very much reflects that greater culture.

It is also nothing new. When fandom was first starting there was the “Great Exclusion Act” when a group of young, excitable, fanboys attempted to spread their political/fannish feud propaganda at the first Worldcon in New York, and were not only prevented from doing so but not allowed back into the con. All fandom was aflame with war! (The fact that this line is a cliché is also a clue that fandom is not, and never has been, a calm peaceful sea of agreement.)

The reason we have a fandom to disunite now, is because calmer heads prevailed. Bob Tucker in particular, with intelligence and humor, led fandom to the idea that it ought have nothing to do with greater world politics, but should concentrate on the thing we all loved, that being science fiction. (Mind you, his sympathies were with the ones who were excluded, but he was able to overcome his own political inclinations for the best of fandom.)

The fact that fandom as an open culture survived more than seventy years is a testament to the power of that simple, uniting concept. That we are once again looking to be rift by a political divide was perhaps inevitable. But as fandom has grown, expanded and diluted itself, we may have won the überculture wars and lost our heart.  We have not been able to transmit this central precept to new fans. Geeks are chic, but somehow we’ve let the fuggheads win.

And, from my observations, this is an inevitable consequence of the creation of any kind of fandom, from tattoos to swords to us. There is a thing people like. Thing people make initial contact with each other to discuss things and thingishness. At some point a woman (and it’s usually women, no matter what the thing) organizes gatherings, and thing fandom grows bigger and better. At some point, the people who care not about things, but merely about being a big fish in a small sea, squeeze out the thing people. Sometimes thing fandom just dies, sometimes it fissures and the process is recreated. So the fuggheads always win. The only question is how long can we delay their inevitable triumph?

Forget delaying them. I agree with what she is saying about the inevitability of the attempted infiltrations, but I very much disagree that their triumph is inevitable. We don’t have to let them in. We don’t have to let them oh-so-helpfully volunteer to make things easier for us and take those weighty responsibilities off our shoulders.

And most of all, we don’t have to sit back and lament the fact that they’ve taken over and ruined the organizations and institutions that we used to love. We can walk away without looking back, leave them to their inevitable implosion, and build new and better ones. But we have to learn from the failures of our predecessors. When the bureaucrats and the activists and the whiners start in with their usual routine about access and fairness and reaching out, we need to kick THEM out, not foolishly listen to them and let in the destroyers.

Don’t throw pearls before swine. Don’t attempt to engage rationally with madmen and fools.

Divide, divide

It is precisely as Prechter predicted. Economic downturns are accompanied by political division and separation:

If you mention the word “secession” most people think of the South during the Civil War. But today, a new movement is gaining steam because of frustration over a growing, out-of-control federal government.

A number of conservative, rural Americans are taking about seceding and creating their own states, meaning a new map of the United States of America could include the following:

    A 51st state called Jefferson, made up of Northern California and Southern Oregon
    A new state called Western Maryland
    A new state called North Colorado

These are real movements gaining traction with voters across the country. Jeffrey Hare runs the 51st State Initiative in Colorado, an effort to fight an out-of-control legislature trying to ram big government policies down the throats of voters.

The smaller and less centralized the political entity, the more power the individual and the local people have. This is why it is resisted by the government bureaucracies and the progressives in the media and elsewhere.

But the economic downturn is barely beginning, and that’s why we’re only seeing the peaceful and political pursuit of self-determination. By the time we’re at the economic nadir, the European Union, the United States of America, and even the United Kingdom will all be in pieces.

This is one of the silver linings in the ongoing decline and fall of the USA. Secession, separation, and segregation are all part of a cyclical process; we have survived the swing of the pendulum on the backs of the greatest debt expansion in history. Don’t be surprised when it swings back to an equally impressive extent. Remember, Aristocracy is the next stage in the Ciceronian political cycle.

Bush vs Clinton redux

Actually, I tend to favor the bifactional ruling party presenting the tattered remnants of the nation with a choice between Clinton II and Bush III. Nothing could better illustrate the facade of “democracy” that misleads the American electorate.

Our meritocratic society seems increasingly nepotistic and dynastic. There was a Bush or a Clinton in the White House and cabinet for 32 years straight. We’re Bill Murray stuck at 6 a.m. in Harold Ramis’s comic masterpiece, “Groundhog Day.” As Time’s Michael Crowley tweeted on Friday, “Who else is looking forward to potentially TEN more years of obsessing about Hillary Clinton’s past, present and future?”

The Clintons don’t get defeated. They get postponed.

Just as Hillary clears the Democratic field if she is healthy and runs, a major Romney donor told The Washington Post that “if Jeb Bush is in the race, he clears the field.” Jeb acknowledged in Long Island on Monday, referring to his mom’s tart comment that “if we can’t find more than two or three families to run for higher office, that’s silly,” that “it’s an issue for sure.” He added, “It’s something that, if I run, I would have to overcome that. And so will Hillary, by the way. Let’s keep the same standards for everybody.”

It is impossible to listen to either the politicians or the corporate gatekeepers and conclude that we are living in anything that even remotely approximates a “meritocracy”. Best and brightest? Hardly. This is government by con men, rule by the most shameless.

Not so stupid after all

Tina Fey’s comments about the visibility of Russia notwithstanding, it appears Sarah Palin’s foreign policy perspective was, in some ways, more perspicacious than Barack Obama’s:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin warned that if Senator Barack Obama were elected president, his “indecision” and “moral equivalence” may encourage Russia’s Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

Palin said then: After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.

For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine.  In light of recent events in Ukraine and concerns that Russia is getting its troops ready to cross the border into the neighboring nation, nobody seems to be laughing at or dismissing those comments now.

Hounshell wrote then that Palin’s comments were “strange” and “this is an extremely far-fetched scenario.”

“And given how Russia has been able to unsettle Ukraine’s pro-Western government without firing a shot, I don’t see why violence would be necessary to bring Kiev to heel,” Hounshell dismissively wrote.

That being said, the problem wasn’t Obama’s indecision, but rather the decision of the USA to support and encourage the anti-democratic revolutionaries who forced Ukraine’s democratically elected president to flee, thus handing Putin the international moral high ground and permitting him to send in Russian troops “to restore democracy” to Ukraine.

The real cost of the Obama foreign policy is that he has simply thrown away America’s second-greatest foreign policy asset; the credible claim that the USA held the moral high ground vis-a-vis its enemies. The Obama administration has never understood that even when one has overwhelming might on one’s side, the failure to establish at least a credible claim to the moral high ground means that those who might otherwise stay neutral will be forced into at least nominal opposition.

This is why Rome, in several centuries of world-spanning conquest, never fought a war that wasn’t “defensive”, and why Hitler went to the trouble of dressing dead bodies in Polish uniforms to excuse the Nazi invasion of Poland. The USA has gone from a global crusade for democracy to overthrowing multiple duly elected governments in a few short years, and this has not escaped the world’s attention.

Of course, President McCain would have been even worse, in foreign policy terms, than President Obama. Obama may have handed Putin an excuse to invade Ukraine, but at least he hasn’t started an open war with Russia… yet.

Playing with fire

What business is it of the NFL’s to interfere with state law in Arizona?

Call it what you want — anti-gay or religious rights — but if Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signs a controversial bill, you might not be calling Arizona the home of the 2015 Super Bowl.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, S.B. 1062, is the current controversy du jour out of Arizona, and the National Football League is with the opposition.

“Our policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or any other improper standard,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told USA Today. “We are following the issue in Arizona and will continue to do so should the bill be signed into law, but will decline further comment at this time.”

The idiots in the league office are making the same mistake that the gatekeepers in SF/F made about 20 years ago. They wrongly assume that they are in a position to dictate to the public, when in fact it is their position that relies upon the good will of  the public.

Tolerance is an evil joke. It is nothing but a stalking horse to impose anti-Christian, anti-Islamic secular values on an unwilling public. It is now eminently clear that the First Amendment was a mistake, considering the way it is being used to attack religion rather than protect it, as was the original intention. Somehow, “Congress shall make no law” has metastasized into “no one anywhere shall be permitted to make a law.”

Arizona should respond by telling the NFL that if it pulls the Super Bowl, it will be taxed 100 percent of its revenues in the state, including revenues derived from television income.

Libertarians are not libertarian

Karl Denninger received a letter:

Dear Karl:

I’ll get straight to the point.

Our general fund bank acount is critically low.

Unless we can raise funds immediately, the following may happen:

We may have to withdraw ballot access support from some large states.

We may have to lay off staff.

We may not be able to finance the purchase of our Libertarian Party Headquarters

Wes Benedict
Executive Director 

No wonder the Libertarians nominated presidential candidates who were terrible on the debt issue. They are addicted to credit themselves. Unlike past elections, I didn’t vote Libertarian in 2008 or 2012 because the candidates were Republican retreads who were little more genuinely libertarian than Barack Obama.

Like the Republican Party, the Libertarian Party is run by hacks who are more interested in perks than principles, it’s a micro-Republican Party. The sooner it goes away, the better. In any event, it should be eminently clear that the problems presently faced by the USA cannot and will not be solved by electoral politics.

Enjoy the crash.

Fat Bastard lied

In news that will surprise exactly no one, it appears that Fat Bastard knew about the politically motivated lane closures despite his previous claims of ignorance:

A lawyer for the former official, David Wildstein, wrote a letter describing the move to shut the lanes as “the Christie administration’s order” and said “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” three weeks ago.

During his news conference, Mr. Christie specifically said he had no knowledge that traffic lanes leading to the bridge had been closed until after they were reopened. “I had no knowledge of this — of the planning, the execution or anything about it — and that I first found out about it after it was over,” he said. “And even then, what I was told was that it was a traffic study.”

Good riddance. The man was less electable than the corpse of George Wallace. And he probably would have made for an even more vindictive president than Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Forget IRS audits, Fat Bastard is petty enough to send a team of Navy SEALs to neutralize a political enemy’s pet hamster.

Betrayed by Fat Bastard

Ron Fournier’s eyes are belatedly opened to Chris Christie’s manifest unfitness for office:

A year ago, I wrote: “The smartest move in politics today is to move against Washington and the two major parties. And the smartest man in politics may be Chris Christie.” I take it back.

At the time, the New Jersey governor had channeled the public’s disgust with political dysfunction, chastising House Republican leaders for refusing to allow a vote on a Hurricane Sandy relief bill. Christie said the game-playing that derailed the relief bill showed “why the American people hate Congress.” He accused his own party’s leadership for “selfishness,” “duplicity,” and moral failure.

His approval rating topped 70 percent.

Now his numbers are dropping, because he wasn’t so smart. Rather than stay true to his post-partisan image, Christie ran a hyper-political governor’s office that focused relentlessly on a big re-election win to position him for a 2016 presidential race. In this zero-sum gain culture, Christie enabled (if not directly ordered) an infamous abuse of power: the closure of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge in a fit of political retribution.

If not criminal, it was pretty damn stupid. His reputation is in tatters.

Like girls chasing loser bad boys, the supposedly conservative media is forever getting starry-eyed over moderate Republican candidates that they wrongly believe to be electable. For some reason, they never seem to understand that politics is a strong horse game and that the electorate has to be led rather than followed.

But none of these people should be surprised. Christie’s maximum upside was John McCain. It’s not only pointless and self-defeating to elect moderate Republicans, they’re not electable in the first place. If George W. Bush had campaigned in the manner he governed, he would have lost too.