Tag: trainwreck

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.

The war against coherency

This is vastly amusing. John Scalzi has lobbied for Hugos for years,
on behalf of himself and others. This is the second year of Sad Puppies.
Charles Stross has openly engaged in what he calls “Shameless Hugo
nomination touting” and the Toad of Tor has publicly declared that
science fiction awards are nothing but “a giant signal saying ‘this is
what we love, this is what we value'”. Dozens of pinkshirts have primly announced that they don’t intend to read anything by anyone of whom they disapprove.

And David Gerrold somehow
concludes that the politicization of science fiction is my fault?

Coming back to the starting point of the column — if we accept that
science fiction awards should not be politicized, then the columnist is
blaming the wrong people. He should start by blaming Vox Day the guy who politicized this year’s process in the first place.

Either Gerrold has lost it or I have powers far beyond my ken. For example, here is a Hugo-related post from 2010 that lists “Tor.com’s Hugo Award-eligible works” and pushes Tor novels, editors, and artists.

4. Irene Wednesday March 10, 2010 12:27pm EST
Hi Spera,

This post was meant to be specific to the works that Tor.com has published.

But that doesn’t mean would love for you to consider Tor novels, editors, and artists. You can check out the Tor corporate site here. 

A vile taste in her mouth

Oh my. Anyhow, I found the angst of a fellow Hugo nominee who professes to oppose “award campaigns” to be somewhat amusing:

Let me be clear: Vox Day is a despicable person whose repeated racist, sexist, and homophobic behavior towards specific members of the genre community as well as the community as a whole should make all decent human beings recoil from his presence.  That I received my first Hugo nomination on the same ballot that bears his name leaves a vile taste in my mouth.  That the rest of the fiction ballot feels, as several people have noted, as if it’s recapitulating the culture wars only makes this nomination worse, and confirms me in my feeling that the only people who benefit from award campaigns are those with large and devoted fanbases–whether those fanbases are motivated by love of a particular writer, or the desire to stick it to the lefties (or, as is most likely, both).
– Abigail Nussbaum, April 20

Or at least, she opposes them when she isn’t successfully running one of her own, or pimping out the “dozens” of others by various would-be nominees:

Even as the award eligibility phenomenon gains steam (and respectability), more and more people are also using the internet to create a more broadly informed voter base.  Dozens of people are posting their Hugo ballots and recommendations (to take a by no means exhaustive sample: Nina Allan, Thea and Ana at The Book Smugglers, Liz Bourke (1, 2, 3, 4), the bloggers of LadyBusiness, Justin Landon, Martin Lewis, Jonathan McCalmont (1, 2), Aidan Moher, Mari Ness, Ian Sales, Jared Shurin, Rachel Swirsky (1, 2, 3), Adam Whitehead).  Blogs like Hugo Award Eligible Art(ists) seek to inform people (like myself) who have little grounding in the category, and make them acquainted with worthwhile nominees.  Existing projects like Writertopia’s Campbell award eligibility page collate information that makes it easier to nominate for an award whose eligibility requirements can seem tricky even if you’re an old hand at this Hugo stuff.  If you’re someone who is interested in voting as more than a single author’s fan, it has never been easier to gain a broad appreciation of the field and its practitioners, even the ones who aren’t superstars.

I still don’t know whether award eligibility posts are part of the problem or simply a ineffective distraction.  I do think that the efforts I’ve been seeing in the last two months have a real chance of being part of the solution, and I mean to join in.  In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting my own Hugo ballot, a few categories at a time.  (I’ll also be posting links to works that I consider worthwhile on my twitter account.)
– Abigail Nussbaum, March 6

The ironic thing about the complaints that Larry and I somehow bought our nominations is that while my massive and energetic campaign consisted of a single and straightforward post, a blogger at Tor.com actively waged a successful cheerleading effort on behalf of the Tor-published Wheel of Time series:

Therefore, O my Peeps, I exhort you: if you can and will, please
consider nominating the Wheel of Time series as a whole for the Hugo
Award for Best Novel, and spread the word so that others might do the
same…. So go! Join! Nominate! Vote! Participate! And maybe help make Hugo
history, eh? I can think of worse things to do with your time!

Of course, the Dread Ilk know my actual position on liberals giving awards to each other:

Everyone has different goals. Rabbits need the group affirmation that
these sorts of political awards offer them. Not-rabbits don’t.
Psykosonik once beat out Prince for Best Dance Record at the Minnesota
Music Awards for a song I wrote; I didn’t know we’d won until months
later because not only did I not bother going to the ceremony, my bandmates who attended didn’t even see fit to mention that we won because they knew I didn’t care. I
didn’t even know I had been a three-time Billboard top 40 recording
artist for about 16 years until I looked it up a few months ago when I
was pointing out the dirty laundry of  the “New York Times bestselling”
authors.

When you are fortunate enough to experience success, you learn to value
certain aspects of it and to disvalue others.  My objective is to write a
great epic fantasy series that is capable of creating the same feeling
in its readers that Dune once created in me. That’s why I simply laugh
when people claim I’m jealous of McRapey, or I’m imitating George
Martin, or my feelings are wounded that A Throne of Bones wasn’t
nominated for any awards.*  Because in the game I’m playing, those things
don’t even enter into it. They’re not relevant to my metric for
success.

That being said, I have thoroughly enjoyed being nominated for the Hugo this year and I sincerely hope that this is merely the first of many such nominations for me and other fine writers upon whom the rabbits gaze upon in terror. I am very much looking forward to attending WorldCon this year and spending lots of quality time with my fellow Hugo nominees there, such as Mr. Charles Stross, who writes: “As a matter of policy I do not talk down/diss Hugo nominees when I myself am on the shortlist. But I shall be waiting for Vox Day in the Hugo Losers Party wearing a
kilt and a shit-eating grin, with a bottle of 90-proof distilled
schadenfreude that’s got his name on it.”

I don’t know. Sounds a little rape-culturey to me. For a nice roundup of the rabbits striking various poses and feeling the heat, check out Far Beyond Reality. And since it’s starting to get boring, I think that’s enough about the Hugo Awards for now until I’m able to read through the packet and decide for whom I’ll be voting.

*As it happens, the book was nominated for the 2013 Clive Staples Award.