Tag: trainwreck

A close call

Unless you lived in Minnesota 30 years ago, I can’t possibly explain how insane it sounds to hear that there are Africans living in Coon Rapids. I wonder how long it will be before they decide that the name of the town is racist:

Ebola victim who sparked fears of a worldwide outbreak was American: Father who died of incurable virus in Nigeria after taking international flight was going to visit his children in Minnesota…The couple, who both hold US citizenship are originally from Liberia and Decontee arrived in the country with her family in 1991 and Patrick came in the early 2000s. The couple are part of the large Liberian community in Minnesota, who moved there in the aftermath of the nation’s two civil wars in the 1980s and late 1990s.

The imported Somalis are bad enough, what with their suicide bombers and the occasional “gas leak” explosions that mysteriously blow up their residences. But Ebola-carrying Liberians too? This is Night of the Comet-level lunacy.

I’m as familiar with the melting pot mythology and Ellis Island rhetoric as anyone else. I get the idea that time plus geographic location is supposed to magically transform people from anywhere into something they previously were not. But seriously, even if you are one of those people whose grandparents were immigrants and are emotionally tied to the idea that you are too a Real American like George Washington because you are resident in a certain geography and there is a piece of paper that says you are, do you really think this is all going to end well? If so, how?

What, specifically, is the positive end result that is somehow going to be produced by establishing Mogadishu on the Mississippi and sending 30 underage Guatamalans to every town in America? Do you see America remaining the same, is it changing for the better, or for the worse? And if diversity is good, then why has every country in the world been predominantly homogenous until very recently?

Perhaps if the unfortunate Mr. Sawyer had lived long enough to bring the Ebola virus to Coon Rapids, that would be enough to convince the American public that this whole “we is the world” sentiment is fundamentally misguided. But I doubt it.

Divergence

I always find it interesting to learn what people actively hate about about a book or story. Here are two reviews of two award-nominated stories that illustrate the vast divide in the SF/F community today. First, Scooter reviews “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love”:

There comes a point in the evolution of any intelligent species where it develops the ability to destroy itself. Mankind arrived at this danger point in 1945 with the invention of the atomic bomb. The science-fiction and fantasy community has now reached the same apocalyptic milestone with Rachel Swirsky’s invention of the dino-porn revenge fantasy tale.  While nukes can merely bomb mankind back to the stone age, “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” threatens to blast the credibility of the fantasy genre all the way back to the Cretaceous. 

The story itself, however, never takes us to a place so exotic. Instead, the narrator of this 966-word Hugo-nominated flash fiction story has an extended monologue imagining her husband as a five foot ten T-Rex who becomes a Broadway singer and hangs out in pool halls. From this description, and the ridiculous title, one might expect the piece to be a parody of the inter-species romance trope found primarily in fan-fic. In a way, that’s exactly what we get.  In overwrought pseudo-poetic prose, the narrator envisions feeding her lizard-lover a live-goat, serenading him with lullabies, and jealousy presiding at his wedding to a genetically engineered dino.  At one point the narrator even inexplicably transforms into a flower. 

Underlying all the silliness is an attempt at profundity so inept that Swisky manages to unintentionally exploit the silliness of the premise and deliver on the chuckles. The titular therapod of the story turns out to be a paleontologist who was beaten into a coma by a bunch of generic bigots shouting generic epithets for generic reasons. The narrator is reimagining her weak hubbie as an alpha dinosaur with the carnivorous capability to enact revenge against his attackers.    

“If you were a dinosaur, my love, I’d teach you the scents of those men. I’d lead you to them quietly, oh so quietly. Still, they would see you. They’d run. Your nostrils would flare as you inhaled the night and then, with the suddenness of a predator, you’d strike. I’d watch as you decanted their lives—the flood of red; the spill of glistening, coiled things—and I’d laugh, laugh, laugh.”

The power of short fiction hinges primarily on a strong ending:  a good punchline, a sudden reversal, or anything that packs an emotional wallop. In that respect, Swirsky does not disappoint. Her climax finally answers the two questions the reader has been asking since the beginning:  how in the hell is this considered a fantasy story, and why has it been nominated for a Hugo? The answer is that Swirsky has redefined the entire fantasy genre. Fantasy does not need to have internal consistency; the only requirement is that it be set in “a world of magic where anything [is] possible”. In other words, it doesn’t have to make a lick of sense. 

Forget world-building. Forget character development. Forget that limitations make a story more interesting. Now a Hugo-nominated fantasy story can just be someone’s weird daydream – about anything whatsoever – so long as it contains clichés that fit into the culturally approved narrative. To her credit, the bestiality in the story is – if not impossible – at least dimly recognized as unideal. But it’s her new insight – that details are not important to storytelling – which promises to be the pink sci-fi/fantasy equivalent of the atomic bomb. Perhaps Swirsky will one day look upon the devastation wrought upon the genre’s readership, and like Oppenheimer, misquote the Baghavad Gita:  “I am become Dinosaur Porn, Destroyer of Fantasy Worlds.”

On the other hand, Justin A. Bacon thinks just as poorly of “Opera Vita Aeterna”:

Easily one of the worst pieces of fiction I’ve read lately. The “world-building” consists of thinly veiling the Catholic Church by inconsistently swapping out the names and terminology and then slapping in some magic-wielding elves. (You might think that magic-wielding elves would have some sort of meaningful impact on the beliefs or teachings of the Church, but they don’t.) The “plot” would be stretched thin on a very short story, but it takes a truly prodigious amount of “talent” to stretch it over the length of a novelette: An elf shows up at a not-Catholic monastery and says, “I killed your missionary. Now I’d like to stay here and study your God.” He decides to stay for several decades while he single-handedly illuminates an entire copy of the not-Bible by himself. This is interrupted by a single scene in which he asks the head of the monastery a question about his religious faith, prompting the head of the monastery to respond by literally cribbing Thomas Aquinas at interminable length. No one in the monastery has their faith or their lives remotely affected by the elf. The elf leaves for a bit and everyone in the monastery is brutally killed by some other elves. Then the elf yells at a statue of not-Jesus Christ.

It’s not so much a story as it is a train wreck of bad writing, bad plotting, bad world-building, and bad characterization.

Both reviewers have clearly read the stories they are reviewing; these are not fake reviews. But what is interesting is that both of them think so poorly of stories that others think very well of. Are the differences purely ideological or is there more to it? I tend to suspect the latter; it might be informative to know what Mr. Bacon thinks of “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” and what Scooter thinks of “Opera Vita Aeterna”.

NB: I don’t think it is fair to criticize Bacon’s lack of awareness of the impact of the magic-wielding elves on the beliefs of the Church since he clearly hasn’t read Summa Elvetica and what is actually there in “Opera” is pretty subtle. On the other hand, it is fair to observe that if he thinks everyone in the monastery was killed by “some other elves”, he was not reading very closely.

Learning to read: a new policy

I deleted yesterday’s post about Catholic charity and the Children’s Invasion of the southern US border because, for the second time this week, some idiot couldn’t bother reading closely enough to grasp who had written what.

The first time, a cretin attributed to me what Tom Kratman had not actually written. Tom expressed a sentiment, I articulated my surprise that his sentiment had not included a certain action, and from this the cretin somehow concluded that I was advocating the action. This was not true; for all that I think very poorly of progressives, I have never advocated crucifying them en masse. As it happens, I would never advocate crucifying anyone, for much the same reason that the Apostle Peter insisted upon being crucified upside down. I prefer to sentence progressives to living in the hellholes their policies have created, with no possibility of escaping them to Californicate other more sensibly governed communities.

The second time, a moron attributed to John C. Wright what I had written. I pointed out an absolutely undeniable fact: the US military would be perfectly justified in defending the borders of the nation by machine-gunning absolutely everyone attempting to invade. The estimated 235,000 illegal immigrants (which counts only those who are expected to be apprehended) considerably outnumber many invading armies of the past; the Immifada is three times bigger than the First Crusade, which was considered an “enormous” army by medieval standards. It is exactly the size of ARMIR, the Italian 8th Army that defeated the Soviets at Serafimovič before being targeted and destroyed in Operation Little Saturn by the 1st and 3rd Guards Armies.

It should be obvious that this is a military and historical and Constitutional perspective on the situation, not a theological or religious one, still less derived from the Catholic Catechism on charity.

As it happens, I do not advocate the machine-gunning of invasive immigrants, particularly not when they have been tacitly invited into invading by an exceedingly dishonest administration. I was merely pointing out that it is a legal and civilized option, and one, I will add, that would be preferred to surrendering and simply accepting the invasion as a prelude to eventual civil war and societal collapse. I favor the immediate humane and civilized repatriation of all the invading immigrants, just as I favor the humane and civilized repatriation of all post-1986 amnesty immigrants from all nations not preferred in the pre-1965 immigration regime. A commitment was made to the American people as part of the 1965 reforms, a commitment that was violated as egregiously as any ever made by politicians. Americans have a right, indeed, they have a responsibility, to hold their government to that commitment.

I don’t blame Mr. Wright in the slightest for not wishing to have his views twisted and misrepresented so completely. Whether that was done in ignorance and carelessness, or intentionally in a vicious attempt to slander him, I do not care at all. In the future, if you falsely attribute to one individual the views and statements or another, your error will be immediately noted. If you do not delete the statement of your own accord after the error has been pointed out to you, the comment will be spammed.

Look, it’s really not that hard. Simply read through the entire post, and preferably, the linked piece as well, before you think to leave a comment here. This is a terrible place to utilize the idiotic practice of skimming until offended, then blurting out your literally uninformed reaction to whatever you imagined you read. There are few things I despise more than comments that begin: “I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but….”

You haven’t? Then don’t write anything, don’t say anything, don’t even try to THINK anything, until you do. And before you decide to criticize anyone, take the time to ascertain that the individual you are criticizing actually wrote what you think they wrote.

Bambi vs Godzilla, Round 2

Tumblr takes on 4chan. It goes about as well for them as you would tend to assume. Less than one day to go from #shutdown4chan to “PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DELETE YOUR SELFIES!”

It reminds one that feminists have no idea what post-Christian society has in store for women. Literally no idea at all.

The challenge of cause-and-effect

This plaintive protest, in a nutshell, explains why there can never be any significant mixing of various population sub-groups that will be successful over time. Not without the rule of a militarized aristocracy at a bare minimum, and a strictly limited voting franchise at best.

“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

Now, this is a woman who cannot grasp the connection between her votes for “anything that will make this city better” and the consequent increase in her property tax bill. How can one reasonably argue that she should be permitted to vote? She is literally non compos mentis with regards to basic politics.

And she is high-functioning in comparison to millions of other voters! If nothing else, she has managed to provide for herself and pay her mortgage for 23 years. That puts her ahead of tens of millions of people.

The worst thing is the probable consequences of her selling her house. She’ll move somewhere less expensive, and then promptly resume voting for the very things that forced her to move there. Because she does not understand cause and effect.

QED

It appears I may have erred in describing NK Jemisin as “an educated, but ignorant half-savage”. I was clearly too generous in giving her the benefit of the doubt, as she is, by her own admission, “all savage and damned proud of it”.

This is why I say I was premature in calling for a reconciliation. Reconciliations are for after the violence has ended. In South Africa the Truth & Reconciliation Commission came after apartheid’s end; in Rwanda it started after the genocide stopped; in Australia reconciliation began after its indigenous people stopped being classified as “fauna” by its government. Reconciliation is a part of the healing process, but how can there be healing when the wounds are still being inflicted? How can we begin to talk about healing when all the perpetrators have to do is toss out dogwhistles and disclaimers of evil intent to pretend they’ve done no harm?

(Incidentally: Mr. Various Diseases, Mr. Civility, and Misters and Misses
Free Speech At All Costs, if you represent the civilization to which
I’m supposed to aspire then I am all savage, and damned proud of it. You may collectively kiss my black ass)….

There are some signs of hope, I guess: SFWA did throw that one bigot
out, though plenty more remain. Chip Delany’s been honored as a SFWA
Grandmaster some fifty years after one of his novels was rejected for
serialization in ANALOG because its editors didn’t think anyone could
relate to a black protagonist. WisCon invited me here to be one of its
Guests of Honor, five years after I ragequit the Concom over the
Elizabeth Moon affair. We are talking about what’s happening. We are
fighting back. But I am desperately afraid that Delany’s prediction
will continue to prove true, and that the violence will escalate as more
of us step up and demand that our contributions be recognized, our
personhood respected, our presence acknowledged. If that’s the case,
then we haven’t seen the worst of it yet. And we need to prepare.

So. If they think we are a threat? Let’s give them a threat. They
want to call us savages? Let’s show them exactly what that means.

Yes, because history is absolutely rife with examples of how well savages fare when faced with civilized opposition. I note, with no small amusement, that Jemisin has now publicly conceded the truth of everything I wrote in that controversial Twitter-linked post last summer. She has not only conceded her barbarism and her inability to grasp the fundamental nature of SF/F, but the nonsensical nature of her call for “reconciliation” in SF/F as well.

Last summer, I wrote: “Jemisin clearly does not understand that her dishonest call for
“reconciliation” and even more diversity within SF/F is tantamount to a
call for its decline into irrelevance. Nor do the back-patting Samuel
Johnsons wiping their eyes and congratulating her for her
ever-so-touching speech understand that.
There can be no reconciliation between the observant and the delusional.”

Even the most skeptical critic must admit that I warned everyone the pinkshirt inquisition would not end with me. Don’t let that “plenty more remain” escape your notice. Remember, this is the woman who would read out Robert Heinlein himself out from the SF genre on the basis of his being “racist as fuck“, as well as “the average American” and “most of science fiction fandom” too.

I, for one, welcome this escalation. I think it is a wonderful thing that the other side has finally admitted the ideological conflict they have long denied. I find it encouraging that they now openly confess they seek to “Make them uncomfortable. Shout them down. Kick them out.”

Disnearations of civilization indeed.

Doubling down

Nicolas Kristof has learned absolutely nothing from the reaction of Boko Haram:

Women’s rights advocates in Nigeria noisily demanded action, and social media mavens around the world spread word on Twitter, Facebook and online petitions — and a movement grew.

The #BringBackOurGirls hashtag, started on Twitter by a Nigerian lawyer, has now been shared more than one million times. A Nigerian started a petition on Change.org, calling for more efforts to find the girls, and more than 450,000 people around the world have signed it.

Nigerian women embarrassed the government by announcing that they would strip off their clothes and march naked into the Sambisa forest to confront the militants and recover the girls….

All of us can respond more directly. Boko Haram, whose name means roughly “Western education is a sin,” is keeping women and girls marginalized; conversely, we can help educate and empower women. Ultimately, the greatest threat to extremism isn’t a drone overhead but a girl with a book.

Mother’s Day is this Sunday, and, by all means, let’s use it to celebrate the moms in our lives with flowers and brunches. But let’s also use the occasion to honor the girls still missing in Nigeria.

One way is a donation to support girls going to school around Africa through the Campaign for Female Education, Camfed.org; a $40 gift pays for a girl’s school uniform.

Kristof is acting as if the young women are not legitimate military targets. But that is the entire point. He, and many others like him, have made them legitimate military targets by intentionally turning them into weapons in a cultural war. And he had better pray that Boko Haram does not follow al Qaeda’s lead in bringing the West’s cultural war on the South and East back to the West.

At Virginia Tech, one mentally disturbed immigrant managed to kill 33 college students. A small team of Boko Haram activists could probably manage to kill at least five times that number should they target an American university. And the latest news out of Nigeria makes it clear that they are at least one step ahead of the likes of Kristof et al.

Islamist insurgents have killed hundreds in a town in Nigeria’s northeast this week, the area’s senator, a resident and the Nigerian news media reported on Wednesday, as more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by the militants, known as Boko Haram, remained missing.

The latest attack, on Monday, followed a classic Boko Haram pattern: Dozens of militants wearing fatigues and wielding AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade launchers descended on the town of Gamboru Ngala, chanting “Allahu akbar,” firing indiscriminately and torching houses. When it was over, at least 336 people had been killed and hundreds of houses and cars had been set on fire, said Waziri Hassan, who lives there, and Senator Ahmed Zanna….

Gamboru, a town of perhaps 3,000 people, “is now burned into ashes,” Mr. Hassan said. “I saw it with my own eyes, 171 dead bodies, scattered around.” At least 18 police officers were killed, but Mr. Zanna said there were no military forces in the town because all had been drafted in the search for the schoolgirls.

Perhaps the Nigerian government actually knew what it was doing when it didn’t drop everything to engage in a fruitless search for the young women, who may not even be inside the country’s borders anyhow. Regardless, in the end, there can only ever be one result between those who “fight” by public posturing and those who fight by taking arms.

UPDATE: The US military cannot get involved as it is prohibited by law from collaboration with Nigerian security forces.

Perhaps a ribbon is in order

Strangely enough, all the Senatorial tears and Nicolas Kristof columns don’t appear to have convinced Boko Haram to stop targeting girls:

Suspected Boko Haram gunmen kidnapped eight girls from a village near one of the Islamists’ strongholds in northeastern Nigeria overnight, police and residents said on Tuesday. The abduction of the girls, aged 12 to 15, followed the kidnapping of more than 200 other schoolgirls by the militant group last month, whom it has threatened to sell into slavery.

Lazarus Musa, a resident of the village of Warabe, told Reuters that armed men had opened fire during the raid.

“They were many, and all of them carried guns. They came in two vehicles painted in army color. They started shooting in our village,” Musa said by telephone from the village in the hilly Gwoza area, Boko Haram’s main base.

A police source, who asked not to be identified, said the girls were taken away on trucks, along with looted livestock and food.

This can only mean one thing: a ribbon campaign. That will show the anti-educationists!

Subhuman action

“Take one monkey, train it to
wear a fedora and hypnotise it in to believing it is a Towering Literary
Intellect. I give you N.K. Jemisin.”
– Damien Walter

Shocking stuff! A straight white male calling an African-American woman a monkey! I am as agog as I am aghast! Oh, wait a minute… it seems there was a minor typo there.

“Take one monkey, train it to
wear a fedora and hypnotise it in to believing it is a Towering Literary
Intellect. I give you John C. Wright.”
– Damien Walter
Upon further review, it appears the illustrious Mr. Walter was only calling a white man a monkey. That’s COMPLETELY different, of course. It is acceptable to call a straight white male what one cannot call a gay black female. Because equality. And privilege.

In any event, it is more than a little amusing to see such a complete non-entity striking a pose as the literary superior to one of the greatest living science fiction masters. I would direct you to Mr. Walter’s work for the purposes of fair comparison, but unfortunately, he hasn’t published so much as a single novel. This behavior might appear inexplicable to the rationally minded, but it is in fact entirely predictable.

Because Damien Walter illustrates the primary point made in “Restless Heart of Darkness”, the final essay in John C. Wright’s brilliant and #1 bestselling TRANSHUMAN AND SUBHUMAN:

I realized why it is that the current mainstream modern thought, despite its illogical and pointless nature, is so persistent, nay, so desperate. I realized why these Moderns never admit they are wrong no matter how obvious the error, nor can they compromise, nor hold a rational discussion, nor a polite one, nor can they restrain themselves. They can neither win nor surrender….

The unwillingness of the Progressives to discuss their beliefs is because one of their beliefs (the most outrageously false of all, and most easy to prove false) is that they are superior beings, superior by virtue of their greater intelligence, broader open-mindedness, higher education, finer sentiments, and greater compassion, surrounded by yowling and filthy yahoos. These Progressives, who have never read a word of Aristotle, much less read him in Greek, boast that they cannot discuss philosophy honestly with a psychotic yet retarded Neanderthal like me, due to my inferior nature. Well, I cannot argue with their assessment of my education, except to say ἀντικεῖσθαι δ᾽ ὁ ἀλαζὼν φαίνεται τῷ ἀληθευτικῷ· χείρων γάρ.

Tom Simon adds some not inapt comments after dealing with a different individual exhibiting very similar tendencies to Damien Walter:

I used to deal with trolls for a living (saddest job I ever had), and I can tell you that it probably isn’t masochism. More likely, he is so socially inept and so incapable of reading emotional clues from text, he actually thinks that his words are inflicting righteous damage upon us, the heinous foe, and that he is returning to his lair covered in glory after causing us all to writhe in soul-deep agony at the sudden exposure of our horrible, horrible guilt. And he is so plug ignorant of the art of dialectic that he actually believes he is winning his arguments with us.

Moreover, as a person who despises religion, theology, philosophy, and history, who knows nothing about art, literature, science, technology, or any of the useful trades, he is gloriously unequipped to appreciate any mode of thought but his own – and his own mode contains no actual thought, just an angry clashing of slogans without ground or consequent, like Nietzsche on cheap drugs. Therefore (hello again, Dunning and Kruger) he imagines that his own mental slush is superior to all our thoughts; that we disagree with him is, to him, proof of our imbecility.

At least Mr. Simon’s troll was willing to attempt to engage in discourse, however ineptly. Which does put him ahead of Damien Walters, the current president of the SFWA, the former 3x president of the SFWA, and numerous other would-be luminaries of the field.

A lifetime ban for Sparklepunter

Chris KluweVerified account ‏@ChrisWarcraft
4:27 PM – 29 Apr 2014

“I’m talking, no one takes his money, sells him anything – nothing. Let’s see how racist he is when he can’t buy food.”

Apparently Zyklon B showers aren’t enough for him, as Sparklepunter openly seeks to shun and starve the Jew.

We see it in history and we see it in real-time. It’s not an exaggeration. Leftists literally want to kill those who possess undesirable opinions, and they never stop and think for a moment of the possibility that the consequences might run the other way. And yet, we can see that by their own reckoning, the worst IMAGINED excesses of the medieval Catholic Church of which they so often complain are more than justified.

Since Chris Kluwe is an anti-semite openly advocating the starving of Jews, summoning those ghastly images of emaciated men and women at Dachau and Auschwitz, I think it is obvious that the NFL commissioner has no choice but to impose a lifetime ban from the NFL on him.