Tag: rabbitology

Mailvox: they boldly ran away

 A Canadian reader is amused by rabbits doing what rabbits do:

Over Family Day weekend someone torched the rainbow flag at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.  The response of the campus SJWs was to…cancel their own parade.

The Pride Collective at UBC cancelled a Wednesday parade as part of OUTweek celebrations in response to what it called “a suspected hate crime” on campus over the weekend.

A rainbow pride flag was found burned off the flagpole – located between Brock Hall and the old Student Union Building — where it was raised Friday to kick off OUTweek, an annual event aimed at celebrating gender and sexual diversity

The Pride Collective announced its discovery of the incident and plans to cancel the parade in a statement posted to Facebook late Tuesday.

“Needless to say this event has not made us feel safe on campus and affirms the continual need for more to be done in regards to support,” read the statement. “OUTweek 2016 is about creating safer spaces and we are incredibly disappointed that this has happened during our celebrations. This speaks to why we need OUTweek in the first place as well as to the history of terrorization of LGBTQ+ spaces on campuses – and how this plays into a larger culture of homophobia and transphobia.”

In a follow-up to the initial statement, the collective said it may consider holding the parade at a later date but added: “At this time we feel unsafe organizing and leading an event that has a high amount of external visibility.”

Whoever the magnificent bastard was, he got the SJWs to punch themselves while running away.  Ah rabbits.           

The best part is that there are better than even odds that the rainbow flag was torched by an SJW seeking to play the victim and drum up outrage.

That took longer than expected

The first fake review finally appears:

this book will just make you hate those people more
By Beamer on December 9, 2015

Unsurprisingly, this book is preaching to its choir. Are you a straight white male terrified of the fact that, while white males remain the most powerful group in America, people other than straight white males are being represented more and more often? Do the thoughts of gay people being able to marry or, gasp, women being named CEO over a perfectly qualified male keep you up all night?

Then this book will completely back your worldview.

But if you aren’t a frightened, shallow, impotent straight white male, this book will just make you hate those people more. I happen to be a straight white male. I embrace new thoughts in our leadership, because let’s be honest, we haven’t done such a great job the past 50 years. But Vox Day disagrees, and very openly feels only straight white males should lead.

Either you’re a terrified, impotent straight white male and you love him, or you’ll find this book to basically be an excellent reason to move to Canada.

It’s a fascinating portrait in SJW rhetoric. I mean, there is no reason at all for gay men and women to be just little bit concerned about mass migration from the Muslim world, right?
 

Love Gravity Wins.

The review is pure rabbitology. See, if you want to consider yourself brave and virile and deep, or if you’re female or non-white, or if you’re male and white and deeply apologetic about it, you must not read this book! It is Elil! Beware! Badthink and Thoughtcrime and Tharn await the unwary!

But at last, VFM, it’s Wild Hunt time! Beamer is male, has a dog, and likes the Repairman Jack novels of F. Paul Wilson. He’s a graduate of Boston College and Duke, and uses or used a Blackberry at work. His first name may be Mark and he had a relationship of some sort with a woman named Beth. First one to correctly identify him and provide contact details wins the free hardcover of his choice from Castalia House and gets a virtual skull for social media bragging purposes. Bonus skull for providing place of employment.

Duke University
MBA – 2010.
JD – 2007.

BA – English and Computer Science – Boston College.

Fan of hardcore music.

Soft spot for cheesy aquatic adventure novels.
Uses Blackberry at work. 

VFM Rules: The SJWs take a shot and the VFM immediately apply the Five Ds in reprisal. Dig, Doxx, Discredit, Disemploy, and Devour. Better make that move to Canada now, Beamer. The Vile Faceless Minions are coming for you.

UPDATE: And VFM 38 got him. But 59 minutes? Really, Minions, I expect more speed out of you. Everyone whose minion number ends in 4, you will report to Malwyn for encouragement and inspiration.

UPDATE 2: I can’t what it who even…. what is this?

SJWs always minimize

SN wondered when SJWs will stop trying to dismiss Castalia House:

How many No. 1s do you think Castalia will have to publish before the rabbits stop referring to it as “an obscure Finnish publisher”?

Well, we know the answer is “fiver”, since we’ve already published more than five #1 category bestsellers and rabbits can’t count past that. I’d have to look it up, but I believe we’re approaching ten by now. We happen to have three at the moment, and only narrowly missed having four at a time, as 4GW Handbook was #1 in Military Strategy last week, but has fallen to #10 now.

 In case you’re wondering, as I did, how Grow or Die and Compost Everything could both be #1 in Gardening & Horticulture, the answer is that whereas Grow or Die is #1 in Gardening & Horticulture, Compost Everything is #3 in that category, but #1 in the Gardening & Horticulture > Gardening Techniques category. So apparently it gets its own little orange ribbon too. Which is nice.

Anyhow, it really doesn’t matter what the rabbits say, think, or do. The fact is that we’ve barely gotten started. We just put out our first press release last week, our new Editor-at-large is just gearing up to get rolling, we will have a new announcement to make in the near future concerning audiobooks, and the retail channel that is the primary reason Castalia even exists is very close to launch at last.

We haven’t made any noise in the science fiction and fantasy categories yet, but we will. We fully expect to become the leading publisher there in time, but we’re not in any particular hurry to get there. Our focus is excellence, and everything we do is with the aim to improve upon what we’ve done before. We have great authors, authors such as John C. Wright, Martin van Creveld, William S. Lind, and Jerry Pournelle, and we have some younger authors that we are in the process of developing, but our depth is still somewhat thinner than we would like. But we will not sign up new authors simply for the sake of putting out more books. Our goal is for me to represent the low bar for Castalia House.

We know we have the best support any small publisher could hope for, and we are intent on proving worth of your trust. We aren’t going to publish any stinkers because we have to get X number of books out per quarter, and while we may make the occasional esoteric call from time to time, we have the luxury of simply refusing to release substandard works.

Caricatures

It’s rather funny reading the midwits at Popehat attempting to describe me for the benefit of each other. Even Clark himself doesn’t grasp what all of the Ilk have with ease:

Clark, I appreciate your description of Vox as a performance artist; it gives me a bit better perspective on his schtick. Given the “anti” in many of his expressed views, I can see what attraction he has for you. Yes, he’s brilliant; he has constructed an immense Vox-world, with its own social rules, heirarchy and mythos. He’s positioned himself in a pseudo-intellectual gaping hole and become the god of the whiny, sniveling mysogynistic mouth-breathers that inhabit its nether-regions. He is so over-the-top that it must take an enormous, expansive intellect to keep all that crazy consistent in some sort of weird Vox-world logical way. He’s also one of the nastiest narcissitic psychopaths to inhabit the planet Earth. The evil demons seem to dance at his command, as he draws the most vile thoughts out of his subjects to pour forth onto the internet – and he does it all with flair, making it seem effortless. Reading his posts and the comments is like looking beneath a rock and being blinded by the awful blackness of the anti-Christ. Some people say he’s insecure, but I think he’s doing pretty well at holding on to his Vox-world god-throne. I suspect much planning and deliberation go into his performance, because being Vox must be exhausting. I don’t know how he sleeps at night.

Count the obvious flaws:

  1. I’m not a performance artist. What you see is pretty much who and what I am. It’s an incomplete picture, of necessity, but what is visible is accurate enough. There is a reason you never see any contradicting exposes by people who know me; I don’t contradict myself.
  2. The readers here are not “whiny, sniveling mysogynistic mouth-breathers” and I am no one’s god.
  3. Occam’s Razor suggests that I am able to maintain consistency because I hew closely to truth and logic. Vox’s 1st Law: Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity.
  4. I’m neither nasty nor psychopathic. I am, admittedly, narcissistic and Machiavellian. I’m also highly empathetic. The psychologist commented that my profile was unusual in that I’m equally comfortable with direct or indirect conflict.
  5. It’s not exhausting being me at all. For better or for worse, I know who I am. When I sleep, I sleep soundly.

She certainly does better than Gunnar:

My attack on Vox Day’s anti-scientific nonsense is from the perspective of a biologist btw. I’ve seen a lot of anti-scientific nonsense over the years and I’m somewhat familiar with Vox Day’s creationist arguments, and I have dismissed them as completely nonsensical and generally awful. Now this Clark dude is telling me that I’m either being dishonest or illogical because I think Vox Day is peddling anti-scientific nonsense and I dismiss the idea of him as a serious thinker. Clark probably doesn’t even realize that by his argument he’s dismissing most of the biologists (and probably most scientists) on this planet as either being dishonest or illogical, but that is what he’s doing by claiming those are the two options if you think Vox Day is bad at logic.

This is amusing. What Gunnar doesn’t understand is that I am considerably more intelligent than most of the biologists and most of the scientists on the planet. One of the things we discussed in the May Brainstorm was directly related to this: the importance of NOT blithely trusting the experts for the highly intelligent. TL;DR: if you have a 135+ IQ and an expert is pinging your sense of wrongness, trust your instincts, put on the brakes, and dig into what he’s advising before proceeding no matter what the subject. Most of the time that happens, the expert is either unaware of better options, has got something wrong, or is misapplying a standard protocol. My philosophy with experts is this: respect, but verify.

And I always enjoy this idiotic midwit heuristic:

Christ what an insecure little shit. One of the things I’ve learned in life is that those who pound their chest and boast about what a badass they are and the havoc they’ll dispense if you cross them, aren’t and effectively can’t. They’re laughable. I have no idea what personal demon haunts him, but he’s definitely overcompensating for some perceived inadequacy. What a silly little shit.

Meanwhile, half the media organizations from the UK to New Zealand are writing furious stories about the ongoing havoc in the science fiction field. And all that havoc was triggered by a single blog post. Imagine what could happen if I actually put any thought or effort into it.

And all these Popehat dramatics stem from one tweet and one post that revealed nothing new about anyone. It’s nothing more than rabbits hopping about in alarm and attempting to DISQUALIFY for fear that members of their warren will defect and join the big bad wolf pack.

THEY are in retreat

I told you that George RR Martin has lost the plot. After publicly declining the very debate for which he called, he actually repeated his call for what he already rejected:

Here’s an idea — debate the issue without epithets. Namecalling, whether with old epithets or new ones, is no substitute for actual discussion.

Oh, come on, you cowardly sad sack of an SJW. I gave you the opportunity to debate the issue. Honestly. Civilly. Rationally. You declined. So, guess what that leaves? And while we’re at it, just get it over with and hand the books over to Brandon Sanderson or Joe Abercrombie to finish already.

As Martin’s befuddled post demonstrates, it is readily apparent that science fiction’s CHORFs aren’t entirely confident they are winning anymore. Jim Hines steals yet another page from John Scalzi’s playbook, this time playing the classic “hey, forget my past attacks on you, we’re all just friends who happen to disagree” card:

I am so damn tired of the insistence on shoving everyone and everything into an artificial “Us vs. Them” framework. The Puppies thing is just the latest example. The only clearly defined “side” in this mess is the puppies themselves, and even that’s a slippery argument. Is Theodore Beale of the Rabid Puppies on the same side as Brad Torgersen and Larry Correia? Correia suggests they are: “Look at it like this. I’m Churchill. Brad is FDR. We wound up on the same side as Stalin.” But what about the commenters? Can people support some of what the puppies said they wanted — say, greater awareness of tie-in work in Hugo nominations — without having to swear allegiance to all things rabid?

There is nothing artificial about it. The main reason SJWs were successful in infiltrating the science fiction establishment and imposing their ideology on it was due to their Fabian strategy of denying any conflict was taking place. Their entryism depended entirely upon stealth and plausible deniability. That’s why the single most important aspect of both #GamerGate and #SadPuppies was the way in which it was made perfectly clear to everyone that there are, in fact, two sides.

There are those who want to be able to define what is permissible to read, write, design, develop, play, think, and say, (SJWs) and those who wish to read, write, design, develop, play, think, and say whatever the hell they happen to please. (Everybody else)

Jim Hines isn’t “so damn tired” of “an artificial Us vs. Them framework”. He is simply alarmed that their most effective tactic has been exposed and rendered impotent.

 I keep coming across commentary and arguments that assume you have to be either pro-puppy or anti-puppy. In broader discussions, you’re either us or you’re the enemy. Left or Right. Puppy or CHORF. Lately, I’m seeing more accusations of blacklists and gatekeepers and people’s careers being hurt because of their politics or beliefs or whatever, because some publishers are for Us and some are for Them, and you can’t succeed in this business without swearing allegiance to the Evil Gun Nuts of Baen or the Evil Tree-hugging Lib’ruls of Tor. To be honest, that last bit is funny as hell.

His point might be more convincing if we didn’t have Charles “15 Hugo Nominations” Stross on record warning me about the danger to my career if I didn’t stop writing my op/ed column and start sucking up to the then-Toad of Tor and Tor Senior Editor PNH. Or testimony from everyone from Larry Correia to Sarah Hoyt. You certainly can succeed in this business by fighting the establishment, but that doesn’t mean the establishment doesn’t exist or that it won’t attack you. It’s not like everyone doesn’t know that opinions deemed badthink can not only ruin your chances of getting published by an SJW-dominated publishing house, but get them to conspire to have the SFWA Board vote to “expel” you.

I know some of the Sad Puppies desperately want there to be some kind of
Social Justice Warrior Conspiracy that’s been manipulating the Hugos
and persecuting them for years, because that creates a simple narrative
with them as the feisty rebels striking a blow against the Evil Empire.
But there’s been zero evidence for it. Correia himself said he’d audited
the Hugos a few years back and found no sign of anything suspect.

The lesson, as always, SJWs ALWAYS lie. Correia found no sign of anything suspect in the ballot-counting by the WorldCons. He did not admit there was no SJW conspiracy. A very dishonest switcheroo by McCreepy.

Part of my anger at Torgersen and Correia is because I feel like they deliberately encouraged this Us vs. Them mentality in order to win support and votes. They invented an evil cabal of “Them,” then rallied people to join their side against this fictitious enemy. Which only increases the abuse and the hatred. And please note: I’m angry at them as individuals, not because they’re conservative, or because of their views on gun control, or because they might have a different religious belief than I do. I’m angry because whatever problems were out there, these two individuals actively made them worse, and they hurt a great many people in the process. Themselves included.

Fandom is not two distinct sides. It’s a bunch of people who like things in a really big genre, a genre that has guns and spaceships and dinosaurs and dragons and magic and manly men and genderfluid protagonists and grittiness and erotica and humor and hard-core feminism and sexism and racism and hope and stereotypes and anger and messages and politics and fluff and were-jaguars and superheroes and so much more.

Criticism is not war. Choosing not to read or support things you don’t like isn’t censorship. Liking something problematic doesn’t make you a bad person.

He shouldn’t be angry at Brad and Larry, who both seriously attempted to fix the Hugo system. He should be angry at me, because I have successfully exposed that which Hines and the other SJWs desperately wanted to keep hidden, for the same reason they hid their history of embracing child molesters like Breen, MzB, and Kramer, to name a few. But we didn’t make anything worse, any more than Deidre Saoirse Moen raped any children when she helped bring MzB’s behavior to light.

Criticism isn’t war. But taking over the SF establishment for ideological purposes is war. Of course they don’t like the fact that an opposition has arisen and is fighting back. That’s why they tried to discredit and disqualify and defenestrate me 10 years ago. They correctly sensed a potentially dangerous enemy and attempted to marginalize me. But I’m still here, and more importantly, I am not alone.

That’s why they are suddenly declaring there is no war. But it’s too late. The mask has been ripped off and too many have seen the true face of the SJWs…. as Dave Freer of the Mad Genius Club notes their recent behavior:

But seriously, what have the AP [Anti-Puppies] tried so far, and what success has it brought them?  They’ve brought out media attacks accusing the Puppies and nominees of being sexists, racists, misogynist, homophobes – the usual made-up get out of jail cards rubbish with no substance and some funny twists – we’re all white Mormon men. Especially Sarah Hoyt. And a twenty year bi-racial marriage makes Brad Torgersen a racist. Then the voters weren’t real fans but slaves who voted to order (which was a true PR disaster, angering a huge circle of people).

Then there were the ‘you’ll never work in this town’ again threats to careers and reputations – with the Nielsen-Haydens and David Gerrold shrieking ‘who will rid us of these troublesome puppies?’ and providing precise instructions of what to do. Not a ‘blacklist’ of course (slither). Just things that people would do, like exclude them from publications, cons and reviews. Unlike the puppies, who actively said that their people shouldn’t, for example, boycott Tor, no such criticism came out of the AP. We’ve had people inform us we’re mad (at great length. It was funny, and very revealing – about the bat-sh!t loony writer), and bad, and just downright unfeeling to poor David’s tender sensibilities. Some AP camp-follower called Jane Carnall of Edinburgh, who has written a few opinion pieces in ‘The Guardian, went off and followed the instruction issued on ‘Making Light’ and started issuing fake 1 star reviews on Amazon on John Wright’s stories.

Oh and the cheering announcement that they will ‘No Award’ the Pups nominees out of existence, and we’ll never ever win Hugos. The latest (from a chorus, including Scalzi) has been that if the puppies and nominees do not immediately and forthwith viciously denounce Vox Day they will declare us stupid dupes and one with him. Deserving of his fate too. I’ve kind of lost track of the ‘if you do’ offer. Maybe we’ll be allowed to live out our short miserable lives like penitent whores in a nunnery, being kindly permitted to clean their chamber-pots with our tongues. Think for yourselves what you’d do given that choice: live free and maybe win or die, or surrender and live as a second – or third or fifth class citizen, continually used as a kicking boy?

And if the AP told me otherwise, I wouldn’t believe a word, given their track record. The AP really have credibility issues they need to work on.

Never believe an opponent who tries to tell you the game hasn’t even started yet. And never believe an enemy who tells you that because there is no war, you should stop shooting at him and lay down your arms. Remember, rabbits only win when wolves refuse to fight.

Interestingly enough, after an amount of his usual meandering, R. Scott Bakker reaches much the same conclusion:

 The fact that Beale managed to pull this little coup is proof positive that science fiction and fantasy matter, that we dwell in a rare corner of culture where the battle of ideas is for… fucking… real.

Only it’s not a rare corner. The battle of ideas is ongoing and everywhere throughout the culture. It’s in Games, it’s in Science Fiction, it’s in Comics, and it’s in TV and Movies. And for the first time in decades, those who favor liberty are on the offensive.

SJWs always lie

Case in point: Mary Robinette Kowal:

Mary Robinette Kowal says:   
April 13, 2015 at 6:25 pm   

Speaking as someone who has been the repeated target of Vox Day, this strategy does not work. Until April 11, 2015, I have NEVER mentioned him on my blog. EVER. I have him blocked on all social media.

“He doesn’t attack anyone that hasn’t opened the ball up.”
HA! His first mention of me is mid-2013.

He has threatened to post where I live. And yes, he could, because he has the SFWA directory.

This idea that you can ignore him and he’ll go away is demonstrably not how it works.

What a poisonously stupid little bitch. Keep in mind this is Johnny Con’s former VP in SFWA. She is a shameless liar. I absolutely did NOT threaten to post where she lived. She publicly called me out on TWITTER about my claim that accused child molester Ed Kramer was a member of SFWA and was listed as such in the SFWA directory on June 23, 2014. The problem, of course, was that in order to provide evidence of my 100-percent correct claim by posting the relevant page from the 2010 SFWA directory, I would have to expose the names and addresses of everyone on that page, including the lying bitch herself. As it happens, Kowal, Mary Robinette (A) is directly above Kramer, Edward E. (A) on page 26 of the SFWA Directory.

This is the “proof” she cites that I “threatened to post” where she lived. Notice that they started claiming that Kramer was not a member after scrubbing his name from the online membership directory that morning. What a pity that I’d already grabbed a screenshot, knowing how these liars always lie.

Now, note that the convicted child molester Ed Kramer is not a current Active member of SFWA because he has not paid his dues… from prison. He is still eligible and can restore his Active status in the organization any time he simply pays his dues. He was absolutely a member of SFWA in 2010, as the SFWA directory showed, and he was STILL listed as a member of SFWA in their online directory as of June 24, 2014, although SFWA removed the listing only hours after I posted the screencap on my blog.

Note that SFWA member Ed Kramer “was arrested on August 25, 2000 following an anonymous tip, and
charged with molesting three teenage boys. The ensuing investigation
revealed that Kramer had previously been accused of molestation in 1997
before the alleged victim recanted. Kramer’s first attempt to serve his pre-trial detention in house arrest
lasted only a week due to a reported visit by a teenage boy. After
Kramer suffered a spinal injury in jail, Judge Debra Turner allowed him
to go back to house arrest in January 2001.This lasted until 2008.”

In any event, Mary Robinette Kowal is not only a liar, but a shameless deceiver as well. Not only did she lie about me threatening to post her address, but she lied about me not leaving her alone AFTER SHE CALLED ME OUT ON TWITTER. Sure, it’s true that she hadn’t mentioned me on her blog… because she was attacking me on Twitter.

The lesson, as always, is that SJWs always lie.

I don’t lie on the Internet, Mary. I told you it will never end. And it hasn’t, has it?

When rabbits rabbit

I’m not sure which is more amusing, this guy’s complete failure to even begin to grasp what neo-fascism is, the fact that the SJWs are pretending to take his ranting babble seriously, his claim that “If You Gave a Dinosaur a Cookie, My Love” is better than anything on the 2015 shortlist, or the severeness of the butthurt radiating from his crimson posterior:

Fuck you, Theodore Beale.

Fuck you for trying to break a thing I loved. Fuck you for doing it to serve your stupid, lame fascist ideology. More to the point, fuck you for your stupid, lame fascist ideology. Your beliefs are horrible. You’re horrible. You’re a nasty, cruel little bully, and I do not like you.

Fuck you for making me feel that way. Fuck you for the way you’ve brought this thing that I love, this celebration of great science fiction, to a point where it is full of the sort of mean and hateful desires that seem to animate you. Fuck you for dragging us all down to your sorry level. Fuck you for being so odious that we have to go there.

And fuck you for making me want you to hate me. Fuck you for all of your beliefs that amount to nothing short of hatred for the things I love. For the people I love. For the art and beautiful things that are why I get out of bed in the morning. Fuck you for living your life for the sole purpose of destroying things that I love, and for making me wish that I could destroy something of yours in retaliation. Fuck you for making me write this, in the sincere and passionate hope that it will make you feel even a moment’s unpleasantness.

And fuck you for the very real possibility that a work nominated purely because you used your noxious little voice to rally your loathsome, asshole supporters to support it might win a Hugo Award. Fuck you because it’s actually possible that you will break the Hugos successfully and demonstrate that you’re oh so much stronger than a bunch of fans who were previously just happily attending a convention and voting for stuff they loved in awards. In short, fuck you.

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? I am afraid that the only thing this extended rabbiting managed to elicit from me was a wry smile. As for my “loathsome asshole supporters”, every article like this creates more of them because the true face of the SJW cannot be forgotten once it is revealed. And the lesson, as always, is this: SJWs always lie.

I particularly enjoyed the punchline: “I will not attempt to construct some absolute explanation of Theodore
Beale’s beliefs. Instead, I will construct a caricature of them.”

You don’t say….

Two tribes and an alien invasion

Brad Torgersen explains his view of tribalism in science fiction:

The Hugos (and the Worldcon tribe alike) brand the Hugo as the award for the entirety of SF/F: books, stories, movies, television, music, art, you name it. This is not just the totem of the single SF/F tribe. This is the totem of all the SF/F tribes.

But the single tribe (Worldcon) wants the exclusive right to decide how the totem gets distributed — to which tribe members, and for what kinds of work.

It’s the totem of all, but to be decided by only some.

That — right there — is the root of the conflict. Totem of of all, decided by some. Sad Puppies 3 (and to a certain extent, Sad Puppies 2 and Sad Puppies 1) made the audacious claim that the totem for all, should be decided by all. Anyone willing to pay the poll tax (Worldcon membership) should have a say. We invited everyone to the democratic process. We didn’t care who was or was not in the “tribe” of World Science Fiction Society. This is the totem of all! And the rules pretty much make it so that all can participate!

But the Worldcon tribe — or at least certain vocal members within the tribe — have gone full-retard-tribal about the affront to “their” award, and “their” convention. So it’s tribe-vs-tribe. Are you in-tribe or out-tribe? How can anyone tell? Are you “of the body” of the tribe? Were you inculcated? No? Then what the hell are you doing coming to our tribal ground and fucking with our totem? It’s ours, dammit! Not yours! Ours!!

Protestations about propriety are merely bureaucratic dressing for tribal reactionary mud-slinging.

Mud-slinging which was taken to the broader media by a few tribe-members determined to “nuke” us invaders: Sad Puppies.

But not just us alone. We were almost incidental. The partisans of the Worldcon tribe had a more serious foe in mind.

Because of all the things most frightening to the Worldcon tribe, the worst are the Visigoths of Vox Day. Not just an out-tribe, Vox and his fans represent an explicitly war-like and hostile tribe, come to seize the totem by brute means. So, some of the Worldcon tribe said, “No, we will destroy the totem first, before we let the Visigoths have it!” To which the Visigoths and their heathen king Vox replied, “If you destroy it this year, we will most certainly destroy it next year — and there is nothing you can do to stop us!”

Now, the heathen king is terrifying to the Worldcon tribe. He is a literal barbarian. He talks and walks and threatens like a barbarian. He’s not precisely the guy anyone planned on walking through the democratic door. But because the Hugo voting process is democratic, nobody can be barred for purely tribal reasons. You pay your poll tax, you get a vote. The Worldcon tribe stares at both Sad Puppies 3 and the Rabid Puppies with equal dismay.

Brad’s analogy makes sense, for the most part, but it misses one crucial detail because he is not of the Rabid Puppies. We’re not the barbarians. As it happens, they are. We are a foreign culture, possibly less numerous, but with much better technology, discipline, and foresight. We appear hostile and warlike, to be sure, but only because our thinking and objectives are entirely alien to them. Not only do they not understand us, but they have not even made any effort to do so. Nor would it likely avail them much if they did, if this reaction by one member of the Worldcon tribe is any indication:

I think you really hit the nail on the head about tribalism. While I don’t feel tribalism in general about everyone different from me politically, I have felt very strong fear and vile about… that other guy, you know, the one who you won’t (and shouldn’t) unperson. 🙂 I have spent a lot of time on his blog and, to be frank, it terrifies me. It made me feel sick yet I couldn’t stop reading. I began going through his historical archives and a lot of his views on suffrage and marital relationships, in particular, made me feel nauseous. And what is the kneejerk reaction when someone like that makes us so sick… ban them, shun them, etc. And I think that is why GRRM asks you that question. Because He Who Should Not be Named isn’t just the “other side”, but someone who openly espouses, IMO, horrible, horrible views. I know he says that he doesn’t, but I can’t help but define his statements as misogynistic and racist.

Yet, the more I’ve thought about it, and read your words, I guess if you truly are going to be inclusive, that voice has the right to be heard as well, no matter how much it may scare or bother us. I personally believe that if we were to stop shouting about him as much or shouting at him and just back off and let him come and do what he wants, he actually would, in a way, “lose” some of his power.

When I said fear, I was trying to be more general of all of us on the left “side” but I’ll try to be more clear. I guess I fear the fact that such… Nasty sentiments still exist in this day and age. It’s hard for me to comprehend. It’s not just his views… It’s the very insulting terminology he uses. And again, this is from actually reading years worth of his posts. The comparisons to training a wife like an animal, insulting the physical features of women he deems unattractive, he is a very mean, cruel person and I feel fear that those mindsets and hateful way of speaking still exists. He also seems to feel pride in his hateful words.

For what it’s worth, I’ve also spent a lot of time reading Wright’s blog. Like I said, I was determined to do my research and not just repeat what others have said. In terms of Wright, I actually agree with you. While I obviously don’t agree with a lot of his views, I didn’t find him to be purposely mean at all. As you said, hate the sin, love the sinner. I have actually seen that Christian mindset in him, Brad, and others. Nothing about VD comes off as Christian. He is mean to people, plain and simple. Nothing to do with just disagreeing, he goes out of his way to call people fat, ugly women look like a tranny, and way too many other numerous comments. It actually emotionally hurt reading many of his blogs. I never felt that way reading Brad, Larry, or Wright, even if I didn’t agree with their view….

I have no real, actual complaint. I was just speaking of my perceptions.

Despite her pain and fear, the commenter is, surprisingly enough, correct for the most part. Silencing us is not an option. They have no power to do so. Shouting at us is pointless. We don’t listen to them or care what they say. Shouting about us is also pointless. That only spreads our message and wins us more sympathy within their own tribe and among their allies.

They’re in the position of Flatlanders attempting to defend against an opponent operating in three dimensions. We can come at them any time we want from directions they don’t even know exist. But we don’t need to come at them at all. We have our own objectives that they would not credit even if we explained them fully and in detail; they can no more grasp them than a Flatlander can comprehend a cube.

For example, I have repeatedly stated for more than a year now that I have no particular interest in the Hugo Awards. I still don’t. Had they simply voted my work last year into last place and left it at that, I would never have even looked at the Worldcon rules. But once I was accused of gaming the system to obtain a 6 of 5 reward, I naturally decided to take a look at them. The rest, everyone knows.

The Dread Ilk are not a barbarian tribe that wants to take the land of the Worldcon tribe. We are an advanced foreign civilization that is simply going about its business in what naturally appears to be an inexplicable manner. We’re quite content to leave the primitives alone so long as they stay out of our way, but if a few of them decide to loose arrows at us as we work, we will respond with lasers and cobalt bombs without even thinking twice about it. Or paying any attention to the collateral damage.

My advice to the Worldcon community is very simple: don’t dig the hole deeper. Don’t scream at us, don’t insult us, don’t “send a message”, just settle down and do what you’ve always done and vote for whatever works you find to be the best, or the least offensive. Smile and politely do your jazz hands if a few of ours happen to claim the totem this year. We have no intention of camping the Hugos unless you give us a reason to do so. I have absolutely no desire to ever have as many Hugo nominations as Arthur C. Clarke, let alone Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov, but annoy me enough and I promise you that I will end up with more than David Hartwell and Mike Glyer combined.

There is nothing to stop the Worldcon tribe from continuing to double-down until it is destroyed entirely. It’s their call. The situation rather reminds me of a conflict I once had with a very large, wealthy and arrogant publisher. All they had to do was send me a letter. A one-page letter. Nothing more. But they wouldn’t, for various reasons that mostly have to do with pride. They firmly believed that there was no way that two young game designers in Minnesota could do anything about it.

Eighteen months later, they gave me the letter, a very large check, and not long after, went out of business. All I wanted was a letter. And I got the letter, unfortunately, I had to publicly eviscerate a large publicly-traded company in order to get it. Plus hundreds of thousands of dollars for my trouble. Whether the Worldcon tribe stands down or doubles-down is largely irrelevant to me. I will achieve my objectives in either case. But I really would prefer to minimize any unnecessary collateral damage.

Kicked out of the warren

The atheists in Ireland found that PZ Myers’s relentlessly odious and bullying style was finally too much for them to take any longer:

Atheist Ireland is publicly dissociating itself from the hurtful and
dehumanising, hateful and violent, unjust and defamatory rhetoric of the
atheist blogger PZ Myers. The final of many, many straws were his
latest smear that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is ‘happily exploiting atrocities’,
and his subsequent description of Atheist Ireland’s chairperson as ‘the
Irish wanker’…

Some examples of his hurtful and dehumanising rhetoric
 

He said that ‘the scum rose to the top of the atheist movement’, that
it is ‘burdened by cretinous reactionaries’, that ‘sexist and
misogynistic scumbags’ are ‘not a fringe phenomenon’, and that if you
don’t agree with Atheism Plus, you are an ‘Asshole Atheist’. He agreed
that science fetishism reproduces the ‘white supremacist logic of the
New Atheist Movement.’ He said ‘I officially divorce myself from the
skeptic movement,’ which ‘has attracted way too many thuggish jerks,
especially in the leadership’.

He said Richard Dawkins ‘seems to have developed a callous
indifference to the sexual abuse of children’ and ‘has been eaten by
brain parasites’, Michael Nugent is ‘the Irish wanker’ and a ‘demented
fuckwit’, Ann Marie Waters is a ‘nutter’, Russell Blackford is a ‘lying
fuckhead’, Bill Maher’s date at an event was ‘candy to decorate [her
sugar daddy’s] arm in public’, Ben Radford is a ‘revolting narcissistic
scumbag’ and his lawyer is ‘J Noble Dogshit’, Rosetta scientist Matt
Taylor and Bill Maher are ‘assholes’, and Abbie Smith and her ‘coterie
of slimy acolytes’ are ‘virtual non-entities’. He called Irish blogger
ZenBuffy a ‘narcissistic wanker,’ after she said she has experienced
mental illness….

He also employs hate speech against Christians (‘I left the theatre
filled with contempt and loathing for Christians’), apocalypse-mongers
(‘they make me furious and fill me with an angry contempt’), ‘your
average, run-of-the-mill Christian’ (‘I despise Karen Armstrong almost
as much as I do Fred Phelps’), and several people who were organising a
prayer initiative (‘Jesus Christ but I hate these slimebags’ who are
‘demented fuckwits every one.’)

He uses violent rhetoric. He said ‘I’ve got to start carrying a knife
now’ to kill Christians if they pray instead of helping him while he is
dying. He said about a meal: ‘Don’t show up to pick a fight or we’ll
pitch you off a pier.’ When a Brazilian priest died in a charity
ballooning accident, he said ‘my new dream’ will be shooting priests out
of the sky from an aircraft. When a Christian shopkeeper apologised for
offending atheists, he refused to accept the apology, saying ‘No. Fuck
him to the ground.’ He would rather debate William Lane Craig in writing
‘where I can pin him down, stick a knife in the bastard, and twist it
for a good long while’. He praised a blog post that ‘shanks Thunderf00t
in the kidneys and mocks him cruelly’.

He has encouraged his blog commenters to ‘rhetorically hand [critics]
a rotting porcupine and tell you to stuff it up your nether orifice’.
They in turn have told people to ‘put a three week old decaying
porcupine dipped in tar and broken glass up your arse sideways’, to
‘fuck yourself sideways’ with a ‘rusty chainsaw’, ‘red-hot pokers’ or a
‘rusty coat hanger’, and to ‘go die in a fire. slowly. seriously’. More
recently he said of ‘faux-Vulcan shit’ that he encourages his
commentariat to ‘draw their knives and flense it so thoroughly the
dispassionate ass is feeling the pain in every nerve ending’.

You know PZ spiraled completely out of control when not a single example of his regular hate-on for me didn’t even make the Top 40 list. I quit paying attention to him years ago, and I’m a little sorry about that because it appears we missed some quality antics during that time.

On the plus side, at least he didn’t end up selling his corpulent body in a Las Vegas brothel. It could have been worse.

There is one interesting thing here. You’ve probably noticed that all the various calls for Larry Correia, Brad Torgersen, and others to disavow me are based on a very small number of cropped and ungrammatical quotes; they don’t even dare to quote a single complete sentence. And yet, there are no calls from public figures for Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris to disavow PZ Myers despite there being considerably more examples of considerably more objectionable public statements.

Why might that be?

More fake reviews

This time from one Carrie Schutrick, who pretends that she’s read John C. Wright’s Book of Feasts & Seasons:

Ghastly
By Carrie Schutrick “Neon Fox”on April 14, 2015
Format: Kindle Edition
I would like to make something clear: this book gets one star only because it’s apparently been copyedited. In this day of self publishing, that’s not a given, so a lack of typos and a writer who seems to have a grasp of the use of the semicolon are things to celebrate.

The content, however, is horrifically bad. To take only one example, there’s the inexplicably Hugo-nominated story “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus”, in which a woman whose daughter has just died of cancer is granted a visitation from Saint Nicholas, and the girl is resurrected because her mother becomes Catholic enough to deserve a miracle. (And there’s a miracle Christmas tree, even though Saint Nicholas makes it a point to say that he doesn’t smoke a pipe because he lived before people started doing that. Et tu, Queen Victoria?) The perversion of Catholic doctrine around the problem of evil is…well, one hesitates to call it “blasphemy”, but I cannot think of a term that better fits.

I rather wish I had actually purchased the book, because then I could ethically burn it; it’s considered bad form to do such a thing to a book belonging to someone else.

They’re so sneaky, aren’t they, just happening to show up and post the first and only one-star reviews the very day that someone told them to do so. As before, I reported it for abuse and inappropriate content.