Wrath of the Rabid

Hugos Vs Puppies IV: Wrath of the Rabid

Mere minutes after the nominations were announced, John Scalzi said that the Puppies were attempting to lead a parade that was already in motion, by nominating works of obvious quality that probably would have been nominated anyway.  George R. R. Martin made a similar observation:

    The Rabids used a new tactic this year. They nominated legitimate, quality works in addition to the dross. Works by writers like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, Alastair Reynolds,…Andy Weir, and several others. Some of these writers are apolitical (like Weir) while others are known to oppose everything that VD stands for (Gaiman, Stephenson, King).

This is a tacit admission that the Puppies are doing exactly what they claim to be doing–nominating “legitimate, quality works” based on “excellence in actual science fiction and fantasy,” regardless of the political stance of the nominated writer.

And while the bulk of the nominations are obviously for deserving works–Stephen King received his first nomination for over thirty years–several of them are…unique.

Two Best Related Work nominations, however, are generally being overlooked in the furor over My Little Ponies (and Chuck Tingle’s gay dinosaur erotica in space), and those are much more problematic.  “The Story of Moira Greyland” outs fantasy writer Marion Zimmer Bradley for abuse and molestation, and “Safe Space as Rape Room” by Daniel Eness raises some very uncomfortable questions about science fiction fandom.

Uncomfortable questions indeed. Questions which pedophandom is desperate to avoid asking, or being answered.

Why #whitegenocide doesn't work

The objectives of the white nationalists behind the #whitegenocide meme are laudable. They seek to defend the right of people of European descent to live, to maintain European cultures, and to preserve European nations. They seek to demonstrate that diversity is intrinsically anti-European. These are all very good, desirable, and for those of us who value Western civilization, true and necessary goals. Western civilization is a European construct.

But the #whitegenocide meme simply does not achieve its purpose, it does not work, because it is a misguided attempt to use dialectic in the place of rhetoric. This is obvious, because those who use that particular meme are always - always - having to rationally explain and justify it. And it can be justified rationally, at least to those with a reasonable grasp of history and sufficiently long time preferences. But that doesn't make it good rhetoric.

As those who have read SJWAL know, the fact that something can be rationally justified is not only an entirely different question than whether something is rhetorically effective, it is a very strong indicator that the meme in question is not rhetorically effective due to the fact that it is clearly not rhetoric at all. One does not persuade the emotions through the use of logic.

When people think of "genocide", of what do they think? What is the one single word that immediately springs to mind when someone says "genocide" to you? It's not "Holocaust", it's not "Jews", it's not "Rwanda", it is "bodies". We are all programmed to think of stacks of bodies, limp and scrawny and robbed of all dignity, when we hear the word "genocide".

Well, where are the white bodies? They don't exist. So, to make the connection between the term "genocide" and the serious problem of the 50-year assault on the various European nations and cultures requires an abstract leap, and what is worse, an abstract leap that ignores the instinctive emotional connection. So, #whitegenocide fails because it is not rhetoric at all, it is pure dialectic that predictably fails to move the emotions.

Contrast, in comparison, this ad for The Man in the High Castle which was quickly pulled because it was inadvertently serving as effective propaganda for the very ideas and peoples it was attempting to denigrate. It was run with the hashtag #whatifwelost.

What if we lost? That snapshot of a supposedly scary future looks like a considerable improvement on 21st century America, in which single white mothers raise irreligious, low-IQ, racially-mixed bastards in tenements without support from the children's fathers, most people are up to their eyeballs in debt with less than $400 in savings, no one under the age of 40 can afford to buy a home, and it is illegal to fly the American flag lest it harm the tender sensibilities of young Aztec invaders.

Remember, the best rhetoric is based on truth. In this case, the effectiveness was rooted in the truths being communicated emotionally regardless of what the creator's intentions were. With the rise of tribal politics, the Alt Right, and Trump shattering the Overton Window, something that looks very much like that, less the swastikas, will be a successful campaign ad within a decade.

As #GamerGate has demonstrated, the best memes are visual rather than verbal and they appeal to the emotions rather than to the intellect. They should be positive rather than negative, radiating confidence and certainty rather than fear and doubt. Some of the best memes I've seen are those produced by female white nationalists, which tend to feature pretty blonde white women in traditional dresses with white children; women respond to them with either palpable longing or instinctive rage.

The exact terminology doesn't matter. Both #GamerGate and #NotYourShield were successful hashtags. The Young Swedish Democrats slogan "Europe Belongs to Us" is remarkably stirring. So, I would suggest that white nationalists use hashtags such as #WhiteAmerica, #WhiteWest, and #Whatifwewon, combined with positive imagery, if they want to gain more traction among those who value Western civilization and find white people attractive. Another option would be #WAGA, or White America Great America, which would be an effective spinoff of the Trumpean #MAGA.

Now, I think self-identified white nationalists have a challenge in front of them, in that only in America does a singular "white nationalism" really mean anything; in Europe the various white nationalisms are entirely distinct, and indeed, this is part of the problem that the many American Indian nations failed to surmount. That is why they would do well to endorse all nationalisms from America to Zion; I am an avowed Red Nationalist myself, and I suspect even the most rabid white nationalist has no problem with sovereign Indian reservations.

It is hard, after all, to argue with "France for the French, Israel for the Jews, America for the Americans." The globalists can only win - assuming that is even possible, which it probably isn't - if the various nationalists fail to ally against them. That is why "nationalism" is such a scary word to them, whereas they love nothing better than to accuse people of "white nationalism" or "white supremacy".

The dank memes are important too, of course, and that is where the "Immigration is Rape Culture" sort of attacks are effective. But they are most effective when they attack undesirable consequences rather than specific groups of people. In general, when it comes to rhetoric, it is best to be direct in defense, indirect in attack. Consider how #GamerGate seldom aimed memes at Gawker or Kotaku or Polygon, but at the lack of ethics in game journalism, which everyone knew applied to Gawker, Kotaku, and Polygon.

White people have the unalienable right to live in white societies if they so choose. That right is called free association, and diversity, multiculturalism, and immigration are all anti-Constitutional, anti-American attacks on that. As an American Indian, I hope enough of them are wise enough to exercise that right before they, too, are forced upon their own Trail of Tears amidst the shattered remnants of Western Civilization.

If you want to learn more about the difference between dialectic and rhetoric, and how to make effective use of the latter, I strongly recommend reading my book SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police. It has an entire chapter devoted to the subject.

Reviewers wanted

Castalia has been publishing a lot of non-fiction of late. But over the next few months, we're going to be getting back to our original mission, which is advancing the state of Blue SF, which is to say science fiction that is written in the spirit of the science fiction giants, particularly Robert Heinlein.

So, I'm looking for 10 volunteers who can review for Amazon a forthcoming book by an author we are billing as the New New Heinlein - he does Heinlein better, more respectfully, and in a much more original way than Scalzi ever did - as well as 10 volunteers who can review a novel that is written in the tradition of Louis L'Amour.

That's right, in addition to the return to Blue SF, we're bringing back the Western too. So, if you're ready, able, and willing to read and review one of these books in short order, please email me with either BLUE SF or WESTERN in the title.

UPDATE: We have enough reviewers, thank you!

In addition to TWO new John C. Wright novels we will be publishing this summer and fall, I'm particularly excited to publish a novel that I can only describe as written in the tradition of W. Somerset Maugham's short stories. It's intelligent, funny, and remarkably good.

Our range is becoming increasingly eclectic, but as I told David the Good after his second-straight book went #1 in Gardening, (the Kindle and Paperback editions of Grow or Die are currently #3 AND #5 in the category) Castalia House has four major guidelines for the books we publish:

• Expected #1 category bestseller. If it's not at least as popular as the most popular books in its category, it's probably not for us. That doesn't mean it's a bad book, but we intend to not only maintain, but improve our level of quality as we grow. As more good authors exit the orbit of the failing major publishers, we expect more of them to come our way.
• Intelligent. We don't aim for the lowest common denominator. We'll leave that to everyone else.
• Different and original. As Marc Aramini openly informed his SJW critics at Making Light, no one else would have published Between Light and Shadow. No one, because it was a crazy, unprofitable thing to do. Even Gene Wolfe, though flattered, thought the project was completely insane. It is brilliant and unique and completely over the heads of everyone who isn't a Wolfe fanatic, myself included. And that's why we published it.
• No SJWs. We publish science fiction. We publish fantasy. We publish science. We publish philosophy. We publish religion. We publish literary analysis. We publish gardening. We publish economics. We are in the process of publishing both Westerns and literary novels. But we do not publish social justice in any form.

On a tangential note, I should note that later this year, there will be another debate on free trade. We're still sorting out the timing and the details, but it appears Robert Murphy, Thomas Woods, and myself will be involved.

Second Law

You can almost hear the gritted teeth at NY Mag. But he's laughing. Oh, yes, indeed, he is so laughing:

Space Raptor Butt Invasion is about a man and a raptor who become romantically involved in space. “Soon enough,” according to its synopsis, “Lance becomes close with this mysterious new astronaut, a velociraptor. Together, they form an unlikely duo, which quickly begins to cross the boundaries of friendship into something much, much more sensual.”

But Tingle, who is pseudonymous and speaks on Twitter in a stilted, broken cadence, is having none of it. He spent much of this week trolling the Puppies and their ridiculous white-supremacist leader Vox Day on Twitter. He also released a new story, Slammed in the Butt by My Hugo Award Nomination.

Best of all, Tingle has appointed Zoe Quinn — the primary target of the Gamergate horde for the last couple of years — to serve as his proxy should he actually win. In other words, every Puppy vote for Chuck Tingle is also a vote to give Quinn more visibility and a platform to explicitly refute their bullshit.

I sometimes wonder what planet these SJWs think they're orbiting. Literally Who has been featured in fictional form in TV shows, has been the cause of the destruction of both 4chan and Gawker, and has even testified at the United Nations. But giving her more visibility and a platform, well that just proves that, um, Puppies are stupid white supremacist Gamerhaters!

That's clearly the Narrative. Remember, SJWs must always claim victory. So, if "Space Raptor Butt Invasion" wins the Hugo for Best Short Story, then it's me and the Rabid Puppies who will look ridiculous. Got it? 

Tingle has also been relentlessly owning Vox on Twitter by calling him “Voxman” and concocting bizarre memes using the movie Grandma’s Boy, which is about a 35-year-old manchild who works as a video game tester. So if Space Raptor Butt Invasion really does win an award, which is still pretty unlikely, it’s not going to look like the victory Vox Day and the Puppies wanted. They’re the ones who are going to look ridiculous, and if it’s a victory for gay space dinosaur erotica as well then that’s OK too.

Owning. Relentlessly. As I've said, SJWs simply can't maintain a coherent narrative. It's going to be fascinating to hear them explain how the SF-SJWs no-awarded the super-funny, masterfully brilliant Shakespeare of our time. Just like, well, Mr. Sixth of Five himself.

It's really not fair

But sometimes they throw you a big fat one right over the plate:

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
A white woman who has a child with a black father has a 2 percent chance of the father financially supporting that child.

lionorder ‏@lionorder
That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard all day. There's proof that black dads are more hands on then others.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
Child abuse doesn't count, sport.

One has to keep one's hand in, if one is to remain an Award-Winning Cruelty Artist, after all.

Democrats fear the Trumpening

And well they should:

Republicans are divided, the economy is improving, the demographics are increasingly in Democrats’ favor. The likeliest result of a Trump nomination is a Republican washout up and down the ballot.

I do get all that.

Still, when I hear smart people explaining why Trump cannot win, all I can think is: Aren’t you the ones who told us that he couldn’t top 30 percent, and then 40 percent, and then 50 percent in the Republican primaries? Weren’t you confident that he was finished after he called Mexicans rapists, and insulted prisoners of war, and dished out a menstruation insult?

Did you predict his nomination? If not, we don’t want to hear your certainty about his November defeat.

Nor is it reassuring to read how happy the Clinton camp must be to be facing such a weak opponent. They need to be running scared — smart, but scared — now and for the next six months.

Crooked Hillary Clinton is running scared of Dangerous Donald Trump. And it's not going to do her any good at all.

Immigration, feminism, and dyscivilization

Stefan Molyneux mentioned some telling statistics concerning the timing of the rapid increase in illegitimate births. This chart shows the percentage of illegitimate births, which have risen by an order of magnitude, from 4 percent in the 1940s and 1950s to 41 percent in 2010.

Notice the giant leap between 1960 and 1970. This cannot be entirely the result of feminism, but is likely a combination of a) the War on Poverty, b) the 1965 Immigration reform act, and c) feminism. The rise in illegitimacy is closely correlated with the changing racial demographics.

 

It is worth noting that the great brown hope of the equalitarians, mixed-race children, tend to be illegitimate and grow up without fathers. That isn't exactly a sound set of building blocks on which to base a stable society. There hasn't been a lot of research in this regard, but it is has been reported that 92 percent of biracial children with black fathers are illegitimate; 97 percent when the mothers are white. Even worse, only two percent of black fathers financially support biracial children or their white mothers, whether or not they marry them.

While it is merely anecdotal support for this study, you may recall how I noticed at Paris Disneyland that virtually no mixed-race children had a father with them. I saw many white children with white mothers and fathers, I saw several black children with black mothers and fathers, but with one exception, the mixed-race children were only accompanied by their mothers.

The situation is clearly not sustainable. Society will never be a functional brown equalitarian version of historical white American society. The concept is not even remotely credible given the observable evidence. This multiracial illegitimacy alone is sufficient to indicate why racial segregation is inevitable regardless of how anyone feels about it.

Homogeneous socities arise from heterogeneous societies because the latter are structurally inclined towards collapse. US society simply cannot survive in its current form; the stagnation and decline the USA has experienced to date is only beginning, as the effects of this 50-year destruction of the family are not even close to fully realized yet.

Back to the barricades

#GamerGate's Operation Icy Blizzard is underway:

Operation Icy Blizzard is an operation with three main objectives. First it is to raise awareness about corruption in gaming journalism. Second it is to promote ethical alternatives to the mainstream gaming press. Third and most importantly, it is intended to spark a conversation and encourage new people to engage with it's participants and discuss why they are care about ethics in games journalism and offer suggestions for moving forward.

The operation was originally proposed by /u/MikiSayaka33 last month and with her support I will be launching the operation with an initial Thunderclap campaign, which will send out a message that should reach tens or even hundreds of thousands of people. The campaign is worded in such a way as to both provide links to important resources AND serve as a jumping off point for new people and neutrals to join the conversation.

Obviously ethics in games journalism is only one facet of the conversation and this campaign is not intended to limit the scope of GamerGate, but ethics is the main focus of this particular campaign. The operation will go live on Friday, May 27th. I picked a Friday, because studies indicate that Twitter is more active on weekends and this provides people with a great opportunity to have a dialogue over the weekend.

If you want to participate in this operation, there are many ways you can help! The simplest way to help would be to sign up for the Thunderclap campaign and participate in the #IcyBlizzard and #GamerGate hashtags on Twitter (or other social media). If you are a content creator, you can help by making a video, blog post, art or similar content to encourage people to participate in the discussion and participate in the Thunderclap campaign.

I'm in, Oliver is in, and Lo-Ping is in. It's already at 115 percent of participant goal, but let's see that grow with your support. The media believes it has successfully spun the Narrative, but as it has learned more than once, the ride does not end and #GamerGate always comes back strong from every interlude.

Note that more than 400 separate incidents of game media corruption have been documented on DeepFreeze. As for moving forward, one of the most important things GG can do is to provide a functional action template and field guide for anti-SJWs in other fields.

America is not an idea

And Americans are not proposition people:

The concept of American Exceptionalism is one that on its face would seem to be a healthy one, which is what makes it so pernicious. In practice, American Exceptionalism is a favourite idea of the Glenn Beck crowd. Often what this belief comes down to is that the rules that apply to every country on the planet don't apply to America, because there's a piece of paper with ink on it in Washington that claims so.

America isn't bound by blood like every other nation on the planet. Ethnicity and race may matter everywhere from England to China, but not in America. America, you see, is an exception to these rules, because America was a country created by ideas put forward by the founders. America is a proposition nation, they will tell you. Ideas built America.

This seems to me to be quite the concept! I wonder what it would look like to see Liberty and Equality running around Boston in 1750. How would the Declaration of Independence have managed to push further and further westward, trekking through miles of dense forest, weathering the rain and the snow and the hail, civilizing what was in in effect barren wilderness? What a sight it would be to see ideas clearing forest, laying down railroads, and building canals! I can't say I have ever seen anything so incredible, but perhaps I would if I took a trip to the propositional nation to the south of me.

Yet, somehow, I doubt it. What mainstream conservatives have largely forgotten is that ideas can shape societies and peoples, but they don't create them.

It would have been vastly preferable if the Founding Fathers had stuck to the original term - the Rights of Englishmen - rather than trying to make them sound universal for the purposes of rhetoric.

Just to give one example, those who don't believe in the existence of a Creator God cannot possibly appeal to unalienable rights that stem from Him.

So angry

It's amusing how the SJWs keep relying upon their primary tactic, which is to spin the Narrative no matter what relation it might have to the truth.

Michael Morlock ‏@RevWinfield
The latest tantrum by @voxday has just gone to show that Buttpounding enthusiast @ChuckTingle is both a better man and a better writer.

Great. So vote "Space Raptor Butt Invasion" for Best Short Story. Perhaps I will too.

I am intrigued by Kevin Standlee’s proposal, for a three-stage process (nomination as now, but leading to a list of up to 15 potential stories, then an up-down vote on whether a story was worthy, by current Worldcon members only, then the final ballot as now). The better solution would be for Vox Day to abandon his childish games, but that seems unlikely in the near future at least.
- Rich Horton, Black Gate

Angry. Crying. Childish. Tantrum. Toddler.

Those who have read SJW Always Lie will, of course, recognize the tactic for what it is: a rhetorical attack. Their objective is no different than the objective of the fourth-grade girl who calls another girl ugly or fat. They're simply playing Mean Girl Game, in which the rules are the first person to upset the other person and make them run off crying wins.

Now, you might ask yourself, what is the point of that? Even if I did feel devastated by people calling me names on the Internet and ran off crying, what would that change? In reality, nothing. But in their weird little delusion bubbles, they believe that just the right verbal sally will cause neutral parties to publicly acclaim them and enemies to submit. The fact that this has never, ever happened in their adult lives doesn't prevent them from relying upon the tactic.

Anyhow, if an SJW someone else is slinging rhetoric at you, there is no need whatsoever to address it directly, to deny their ludicrous accusations, or to defend yourself in any way. Because what it means is that whatever you are doing is upsetting them and you should simply keep doing it. You can respond in kind if you feel like it, but there is no need to do so. The more they emote, the more they project, the more they will inform you where their vulnerabilities are.

For example, it should be readily apparent why so many of their preferred insults this year have a noticeable theme to them. They are projecting their emotional response to the accurate charge that as a community, they are harboring, defending, and celebrating pedophiles and child abusers. They very much dislike being referred to as pedofilers and pedophandom, because, as we know, the best and most effective rhetoric is that which has its basis in truth.

Conservatism and progress are dead ends

A commenter at Steve Sailer's observes as much:

Social conservatism, which is largely concerned with morals legislation, is essentially dead, and has been since the Supreme Court Lawrence decision in 2003 (as Scalia correctly prophesied.) Thus anyone could have predicted the victory of SSM, and the discovery of all manner of rights in terms of sexuality, since, apparently, one’s membership card in LGBTQQIV2A is the only self-identification that means anything (not race, not religion, not language, not culture: just with whom and how you like to have sex: this includes asexuals of course, the “A” above: there’s another one for Allies.) So Ross can just give up on that. The same pertains to third trimester abortions or anything else, because virtually any attempt to police human conduct (except the ingestion of drugs, of course) can and will be carried into an argument about our innate right to do whatever we want.

Hawkish internationalism is also a dead letter, since we just had a decade or more of foolishly prosecuted wars, and one can (some cynically, I suppose) claim that with the most pressing issues for the DOD being the extension of selective service registration to women, and the integration of transgender drill instructors into the the Marine Corps Recruit Depots, it is highly unlikely that there will be any non-foolishly prosecuted wars in the near or far future.

Free market economics is also dead, since the American economy has already been heavily socialized by a variety of government controls, restrictions, and, most importantly, benefits, which the citizenry (at this point) cannot live without.

So Reagan is dead, so is Reaganism. The only question is what can we do to improve the lot of regular Americans, materially, and what can we do to generate some kind of purpose for our people and our nation.

The correct approach is not to attempt to save, or fix, the United States of America. As I noted back in 2004, it's dead. It is no more a true nation than Yugoslavia, or South Africa, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire were.

The long term American focus should be on successfully doing what the South Africans failed to do, which is peacefully dividing the empire between the various nations. This will no doubt be difficult for many to accept, but it is what is going to happen anyway, and the sooner that "conservatives" understand that this is the only way to preserve the actual nation, as opposed to the mythical "proposition nation" which is now based on nothing more than Magic Dirt Theory, the more likely it is that they will be able to come away with something sustainable.

The very great irony is that the combination of multiculturalism, feminism, and propositionism is collectively less societally viable than North Korea's insane political economy. North Korea is a totalitarian nightmare, but it has indubitably remained Korean, in fact, more Korean than England is English or Germany is German.

History demonstrates that a nation can survive evil kings and nightmarish ideologies, but may not be able to survive what many, if not most, in the West today consider "progress". One really should be inspired to completely reassess one's ideology when it is observably more societally destructive than Juche.

And still they doubt me

I find it fascinating that every single step along the way, SF-SJWs are always convinced that this time, surely this one more time, they will be able to stop me from pursuing my objectives. The Reverend 3.0 considers the growing movement to permaban the Puppies from participation in the Hugo Awards.

In a way, the Puppy Revolt could end up making things easier on the Controllers, because it gives them an excuse to seize control under the cover of protecting everyone from the Puppies. Not that this will stop the slow death of traditional publishing, but whatever.

Now, Vox wants us to believe he can use the proposed PermaBan rule against the Kickers. That remains to be seen, but the man has an excellent track record on these things.

I'm torn on whether or not Vox can pull that off. My gut tells me that this is at least partially a bluff, but I have no evidence and it runs counter to Vox's pattern of saying what he will do and then doing it. But the gut will say what it says, regardless of reason.

Predictions Time:

-The Powers That Be will move forward with PermaBanning, and will implement it if they think they can get away with it.

-If PermaBanning is implemented, the Hugo base will go along with it.

-If Vox can flip PermaBanning on the PTB, I will give my gut a very stern talking-to.

These people must spend all their time posing, posturing, and bluffing, because every time I do what I tell them I am going to do, they're astonished. Although it is amusing that they're already abandoning hope in EPH, which they were certain was the answer last year.

Of course, I told them as much, in fact, I made it clear that I welcome the passage of EPH, as its implementation will mark the start of the second stage of the Pink SF-Blue SF cultural war. But an open ban would take us to the third stage even faster.

That being said, one has to credit Rev 3.0 for being correct in the essentials:

First, we can all appreciate how much of a brilliant predictor I am. Second, we can examine that perennial question: is Vox Day a legitimate threat or a paper tiger? I have said (over and over again) that he is a legitimate threat. The Establishment has said (over and over again) that he is a "toddler." You be the judge.

Betting against the SJW Narrative is usually the safe bet. And then, of course, there is this:

If the 2016 Hugos are the Year of the Gay Space Raptor (ie, the biggest talking point and what people remember it for), Vox knows what he's doing.

Decline of household debt

The Federal Reserve is up to its customary statistical obfuscations. It no longer releases the L.1 Credit Market Debt Outstanding report; Q1 2015 was the last one available. Instead, it's releasing something called D.3 Debt Outstanding by Sector, however, under this new accounting, Federal debt somehow dropped to $2,959.2 billion from $13,086.7 under the old report for the very same quarter.

That's a neat trick. Hey, presto! And $10 trillion in debt vanishes. I'll have to figure out how the two definitions differ. At first glance, it looks like they simply redefined it as State & Local debt, as that is nearly $10 trillion higher than before.

What is interesting, though, is that D.3 now provides a Household Home Mortgage line. As Steve Keen suggested, this actually peaked BEFORE the crisis began, sometime in 2007, at $10,613.0 billion. It's now at $9,490.6, and has been flat for the last three years, bottoming in Q3 2014.

Household Consumer Credit, on the other hand, is doing better. It peaked in 2007 as well, at 2,615 but has risen to 3,533.1 since. So overall, Household debt has been flat for nine years, but $1 trillion in debt that was previously backed by real estate is now sans collateral. Corporates have $1.5 trillion in additional debt since 2008, but Financials have $2.8 trillion less. The end result is debt disinflation.

This is the problem Steve Keen was describing, which is an insufficient amount of credit money being created to permit any economic growth. We can certainly argue about whether to take the concept of GDP seriously or not, and about whether the government can, or should, create more credit money, but regardless, the available evidence does appear to fit his Minsky model.

The case for separation

Fred Reed asks Black Lives Matter if they prefer integration and being subject to the white man's laws or separation and freedom to live as they see fit?

In reading the endless complaints by blacks about shootings by the police, I usually find it hard to know what really happened. As far as I am aware, the media never allow an unedited interview, or any interview, with the police charged with the shootings but allow endless commentary by people who weren’t there.

I am also often puzzled by the motivation of the cops. Do they confer in the morning and say, “Hey, let’s shoot some totally innocent black guy in front of witnesses who probably have cell phones?” And why are cops not brutalizing Latinos, only blacks, especially in LA, which provides a target-rich environment?

If I could, I would speak to BLM as follows:

I cannot determine what you want. There seems to be a great deal of anger but little clarity. Discussion usually wanders off into demands for justice, but without specifics.

Since I am looking for practical recommendations, let us begin by acknowledging the circumstances we face. You say that white cops mistreat blacks, sometimes brutally. This is true. I have seen some of it, and know of more. White cops seldom like blacks, nor blacks, white cops. The cultures are irreconcilably different. On the other hand, beatings of whites, Latinos, and Asians by gangs of blacks are far outnumber beatings of blacks by white cops. In sum, no love is lost and I do not see a lot of moral high ground. So:

Do you want white policemen excluded from black neighborhoods?

The available answers are “yes,” and “no.” I do not mean to be abrupt about this, but vague considerations of abstract justice, alleged discrimination, and racism do not provide usable answers. So, do you want white cops pulled from black neighborhoods, or not? It’s one or the other.

Personally I think it wiser not to have whites policing blacks. I don’t want to see white cops raped in media circuses. Nor do I want blacks to be mistreated by white cops. It seems to me that BLM should support segregation of police as it would eliminate any possibility of racist behavior.

Speaking as a historically aware Red Segregationist, the eventual and ultimate solution will be segregation, war, and ethnic cleansing. The homogenous nations have always come out of heterogeneous nations, they are not the result of geography. The great sin of apartheid was not that it separated South Africa's blacks and whites, but rather, that it kept them together in an immoral manner that permitted South Africa's whites to economically prey upon South Africa's blacks.

And if you say that you oppose segregation, then I ask you this: do you seriously support stealing more American Indian land by eliminating our reservations? Or is it merely a matter of moral posturing rather than principle?

DNA is destiny. Even those of us who are of mixed race are ultimately forced by everyone else into one tribe or another; look at those who deny science, heritage, and family alike by declaring that I am, regardless of my self-identification, a "white" - whatever that might be; precisely what nation is that? - by virtue of nothing more than my physical appearance.

They should have listened to Bill

Bill Murray knew the feminist parody of Ghostbusters was going to be a disaster and tried to stay out of it, but Sony persuaded him to do it:

RE: Ghostbusters/Murray - Litigation Counsel [CONFIDENTIAL]
Email-ID     104704
Date     2013-11-01 00:30:57 UTC
From     mailer-daemon
To     steinberg, david, venger, leonardyankelevits, daniel

RE: Ghostbusters/Murray - Litigation Counsel [CONFIDENTIAL]
I think you are fine to stay out.  Am sure len has it on his list for us to discuss at his 1-1 tomorrow

From: Steinberg, David
Sent: Thursday, October 31, 2013 5:29 PM
To: Venger, Leonard; Weil, Leah
Cc: Yankelevits, Daniel
Subject: RE: Ghostbusters/Murray - Litigation Counsel [CONFIDENTIAL]

FYI, apparently AG has some ideas (Harrison, of course).  I’m trying to stay out of the middle of this one but let me know if there’s anything you need me to do.

From: Venger, Leonard
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 3:18 PM
To: Steinberg, David; Weil, Leah
Cc: Yankelevits, Daniel
Subject: RE: Ghostbusters/Murray - Litigation Counsel [CONFIDENTIAL]

 I have some names in mind but will wait until we speak with Leah.
 
From: Steinberg, David
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 3:06 PM
To: Venger, Leonard; Weil, Leah
Cc: Yankelevits, Daniel
Subject: Ghostbusters/Murray - Litigation Counsel [CONFIDENTIAL]

In order to more fully evaluate our position if Bill Murray again declines to engage on “Ghostbusters”, AG requested that we identify “aggressive” litigation counsel with whom we can consult to evaluate our alternatives and strategize.  [Harkening back to his prior employer, of course, raised the name of David Boies.]

Personally, while I’m fine with aggressive, I think we are in much worse shape if this goes public so seems to me we should look for someone who isn’t seeking the spotlight.

Can we discuss at some point soon to provide a suggestion or two?

Thanks.

Oh, it sounds as if they're in pretty bad shape across the board at this point. I won't issue any spoiler warnings, because it appears it would be impossible to spoil this movie.

Brainstorm with Dr. Steve Keen

Just a reminder that the open event will start in just over half an hour. It will begin at 7:00 PM  Eastern, and you can register for it here.

UPDATE: Dr. Keen was excellent. Apparently everyone thought it went rather well.  PA, for his part, sent an enthusiastic review:

This was... fucking amazing. I don’t even have high school economics, but I was utterly fascinated. I probably learned more in the last hour or so than in my entire previous existence. I don’t remotely pretend to have understood 90% of it, but I learned a ton. And having you there, as someone I trust, to make sense of it, was thoroughly awesome. This was worth most of the year’s subscription, and I am delighted at the added value. Thanks again.

Working as intended

Apple will decide what files you are permitted to have on your computer.

“The software is functioning as intended,” said Amber.
“Wait,” I asked, “so it’s supposed to delete my personal files from my internal hard drive without asking my permission?”
“Yes,” she replied.

I had just explained to Amber that 122 GB of music files were missing from my laptop. I’d already visited the online forum, I said, and they were no help. Although several people had described problems similar to mine, they were all dismissed by condescending “gurus” who simply said that we had mislocated our files (I had the free drive space to prove that wasn’t the case) or that we must have accidentally deleted the files ourselves (we hadn’t). Amber explained that I should blow off these dismissive “solutions” offered online because Apple employees don’t officially use the forums—evidently, that honor is reserved for lost, frustrated people like me, and (at least in this case) know-it-alls who would rather believe we were incompetent, or lying, than face the ugly truth that Apple has vastly overstepped its boundaries.

What Amber explained was exactly what I’d feared: through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users’ computers.

This is hardly a surprise. If you want to live inside a walled garden, your life is subject to the will of the gardener.

VFM hunt

Here we go again. This isn't the SJW's first attack review either. You know the drill. Let's see if anyone can track down this "Nome D. Gerr". If we do, we will contact his employer, as we have done before when we've caught an attack reviewer in action. How many scalps will this guy make, is it four or five now?

Nome D. Gerr
May 5, 2016
God, Robot
sad puppies find g-d

this is deja vu all over again, an offense to enjoyable fiction. reading this will contract your mind. should history repeat, the sad dawgs, with contempt for fans and bitter worship of hard core ballot rigging, will manipulate this opus died onto the slates of multiple nebula awards. as before, the mad puppies will finish 6 out of 5 on all ballots, losing to all other nominees and finishing behind write in votes for "not again". this injection of organized religion and tea bagger nuttery into SF&F is a perversion and a waste of bytes.

Nome D. Gerr
October 29, 2015
SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police
KINDLE: CLEAN YOUR SEARCH ALGORITHMS

this is a scree of vindictiveness and self promotion. Somehow, probably in a manner akin to the almost success in awarding himself a people's s/f trophy, this time waster appears in too many (and too many completely unrelated) categories of kindle recommendations. for example, just today, this book was pimped to me three times: in Moro history, in adaptionics and in economics. Motivated by apparent personal animosity, this book is gaming kindle.

Having gamed the 2014 Hugo Awards, now I'm gaming Kindle. Seriously?

Anyhow, just to make it perfectly clear, if you leave an attack review on any Castalia House book, I will unleash the Vile Faceless Minions and send them after you. If you have been insufficiently careful, if you have slipped up even once somewhere, we will doxx you, we will contact your employer, and we may even send a log of your activities to your family members. In extreme cases where your local law has observably been violated, I will personally contact the police; you will not be the first, the second, or even the third individual to be subjected to a police interrogation as a result of attacking us.

VFM, check your emails this weekend. It's operation time. This will only require 20 of you, so if you don't get one, don't be surprised.

Don't think that the SJWs are not organizing against us as well. They are doing their level best to identify all of those against whom they intend to run their usual game of discredit, disemploy, and destroy. From Mediated Feminisms: Activism and Resistance to Gender and Sexual Violence in the Digital Age at UCL Institute of Education.

Notice who they have right in the center sweet spot. Twice. Translaton: I'm not a PUA, an MGTOW, an MRA, or a TradCon, so she has no idea where to put me. And their total inability to make any sense of us, judging by their interpretive babble, suggests that the more open this culture warfare becomes, the more people are forced to choose sides, the more it will be to our advantage. And this is good, because Western civilization cannot survive social justice convergence.

Kukuruyo attacked, pedofilers feign innocence

Even as they chortle over Chuck Tingle, who they're going to No Award despite their frantic insistence that they totally get his act and think he is so very funny, the pedofilers are pretending that the timing of the SJW attacks on Kukuruyo are pure coincidence.

“No one is targeting artists because of their politics”. That’s a line that i’ve heard a lot from the social justice circles every time an artist is censored, or is attacked so much that they self-censor. It’s a line i’ve read several times in the last week directed at me, when i have commented in social media about some new attack upon myself. I think my experiences over this last week are a clear example on how, yes, artists are being targeted because of their politics, everytime those politics diverge from the progressive ideology.

I’ve always been an artist who does adult content. My hentai creations have been placed on the internet for more than a decade, and i’ve never had any problems because of it. Yeah, sometimes i got a drawing banned from deviantart, but they were very sporadic things, and usualy deserved; one every 2-3 years at most. No one ever wrote anything about what a horrible person i was for doing erotic fanarts and such.

Since i publicy became a gamergate supporter, the ammount of reports i’ve gotten on art sites have increased, many times in very underserved cases (i got a drawing pulled because the characters had sweat. Yes, sweat…) as well as the amount of people lying about me on blogs and such. And i don’t mean making critiques of me, i mean outright lies (one guy even wrote about how i voted for some candidate in the past US elections, which is interesting considering i’m a spaniard living in Spain). Not only that, but my website began to have attemps to break in. At some point i was receiving more than 50 attempts to break in each day, until i upgraded my security.

But this broke into a new level when i was announced as a finalist for best Fan artist at the Hugo awards. Then people in the social justice circles discovered that i support gamergate, and since then, interesting things have been happening one after the other (aside from the wave of verbal attacks, of course).

First one of my gamergate related works got reported and banned from deviantart. Then someone picked a cheap fanart that i was commissioned to do, about a half nude Ms.marvel, and tried to frame me as a pedophile, because aparently the character has 16 in the original canon (something i even didn’t know), ignoring the fact that the character body was adult. This story was writen about in (as far as i know) a blog and then in a comic news article, expanding the idea that i’m a pedophile for an anime style fanart thats no different than the millions upon millions of anime character fanarts out there, and that i was somehow a terrible threat for teenagers out there who have their heroes destroyed by evil me. I was reported in devianart for “pedophilia” and the drawing was taken down. I got reported on twitter. The attemps to break into my website have come arround again. Then they contacted my advertising affiliates, telling them i was hosting child pornography, so they would cease to advertise with me. They acepted a middle ground solution at first, but then they changed their policies, and now i can no longer receive their service. Yes, and advertising website changed their policies just because of me… and just yesteday some guys where trying to get MARVEL to SUE ME because of a fanart!

But hey, i’m sure all of this is just a coincidence! this has nothing to do with the Hugo awards or gamergate. I’m sure it’s just that a whole lot of people randomly decided the same week to try to fuck me up in every way they could, right? this can’t possibly be related with people from a particular ideology, pissed off because someone with the wrong opinions got a Hugo nomination.

As one pedofiler noted, both Kukuruyo and Chuck Tingle were nominated to further the Supreme Dark Lord's evil agenda, but the two resulting stories are unfolding very differently indeed. Which, she fails to note, is exactly as anyone who has read the 2016 finalist for Best Related Work, SJWs Always Lie, would have been able to predict.

The fact is that in addition to always lying, SJWs always try to spin the narrative even as they always try to discredit, disemploy, and destroy those who refuse to submit to their social justice narrative. Kukuruyo is #GamerGate, so SJWs are doing the same thing they did from the very first day Castalia House endorsed #GamerGate; we have been under non-stop script kiddy attacks ever since. Fortunately, the SJW hackers are as incompetent as one would expect them to be; keeping them out has been a simple matter of practicing basic security.

Of course, being SJWs, the pedofilers have to do what SJWs always do.

• Hard to believe that getting his shitty, sleazy fanart suddenly thrust into the spotlight courtesy of a complete asshat could possibly have any negative consequences for the poor little troll. Actions something something consequences.
• You lie down with assholes, you get up with shit on you, sonny. Also, like all Perritos, he conflates “wrong ideology” with “no talent” and “slating”. Actions have consequences.
• Always amusing to see a GGer suddenly discover that “Holy Crap, I can be held responsible for my actions?! I thought that only happened to women!”
• ’My friend nominated my house for the best garden award and now the cops are all over the meth lab in my garage. I blame literally anyone but my friend.’
• I remember at least one, possibly two, of the Meedium Geenyuses complaining that someone was trying to hack their Facebook accounts — and claiming that clearly puppykicker SJWs were behind this.... That people are egotistical enough to assume that they are always deliberately targeted because of who or what they are, rather than considering that they may just have been the noticed flavor of the day by trolls and hackers… this is a thing that happens.

So, if the SJWs are to be believed, the attacks on Kukuruyo are just a random thing that happens, but are also an obvious and well-merited consequence of his actions due to his being on the wrong side. Right.

Anyhow, Kukuruyo is  #GamerGate, he's been active in the cultural war longer than the SF-SJWs were aware that anyone was shooting back, and he knows very well how it goes. Like Milo, like Cernovich, like Hulk Hogan, and like me, I have no doubt that he'll come out of this latest SJW assault considerably better off than he was when they first went after him.

And as a result of witnessing it, dozens, perhaps hundreds more people who had previously been neutral will come to understand that no one, however liberal they might be, is ever safe from SJW mobbing.

Even Hollywood can be further converged

Who knew that SJWs could make it even worse than it was? Milo observes that the feminist Ghostbusters is going to be an SJW-inspired disaster:

At this point, everyone who isn’t a Women’s Studies major realises that Ghostbusters is probably going to be a terrible movie. But who’s responsible? To anyone familiar with incompetence in Hollywood, the answer should be obvious. It’s Amy Pascal, of course.

Pascal is the former chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. She oversaw production of dozens of blockbuster titles over the years, until she was hoist on her own progressivism. A series of  embarrassing emails in which she cracked some not-funny racial jokes about President Obama clashed with her public image as a good feminist progressive, and Pascal promptly exited the company.

“Should I ask him if he liked DJANGO?” asked Pascal in a leaked email to a colleague on the topic of meeting President Barack Obama at a then-upcoming fundraising event. Her colleague, producer Scott Rudin, replied simply with “12 YEARS”, referencing ’12 Years a Slave’: another slavery film.

The two then proceeded to jokingly list numerous films concerning African-Americans. It wasn’t funny, and, considering Pascal’s public image as a Hollywood feminist, it wasn’t clever either. It was this series of emails among others that resulted in Pascal’s forced resignation from Sony.

But cinema still isn’t safe: Pascal is taking a producer role in a handful of upcoming films, including Ghostbusters. Pascal, SJW-watchers will note, is the producer behind the mooted Zoe Quinn biopic Crash Override: How to Save the Internet from Itself, which I’m sure will be at least as successful as the all-female Ghostbusters. (By which I mean: an utter disaster.)

It’s obvious Pascal is trying to recover her progressive credentials. But her movies are visibly suffering as a result.

Despite her self-proclaimed feminist values, Pascal has proven hilariously bad at pandering to her own tribe. After allegations of a pay gap at Sony, Pascal was quick to offer a tone-deaf rebuttal.

“I run a business. People want to work for less money, I’ll pay them less money. I don’t call them up and go, can I give you some more?” said Pascal in an interview at the Women of the World event in San Francisco. Pascal said actresses should learn to “walk away” if they weren’t satisfied with their jobs. “People shouldn’t be so grateful for jobs,” she said.

In a final, desperate attempt to make herself likeable again, Pascal is now producing rancid films dressed up in social justice-friendly narratives. And it’s working! Progressives are rallying to her defence, crying “MISOGYNY” whenever moviegoers object to the garbage Pascal is trying to feed them....

I suspect the film’s defenders are also aware that the movie is an impending disaster, which is why they’ve rushed to the web to brand its critics misogynists. There’s a lot on the line for them. If Ghostbusters flops, it will be yet further proof that feminism and social justice don’t sell.

Addendum to Veblen. We're going to need a new theory to account for this new form of virtue-signaling conspicuous consumption.

Book of the Week + Brainstorm

As I mentioned previously, tomorrow night will be the much-anticipated Brainstorm with Dr. Steve Keen, one of, if not the most, significant economists working today. The event is open, it will take place on May 06, 2016 at 7:00 PM  Eastern, and you can register for it here.

As I was going over the second edition of his book, Debunking Economics, (which is also this week's Book of the Week) in order to prepare a few questions, I was struck by the way in which his key observation, that demand is not stackable, completely demolishes the foundation of modern economics. I'm not entirely sure even Dr. Keen fully grasps the consequences of his revolutionary mathematical - and logical - observations. From the section entitled Don't tell the children:

For many years, the leading text for Honors, Master’s and PhD programs was Hal Varian’s Microeconomic Analysis (Varian 1992). Varian ‘summarized’ this research so opaquely that it’s no surprise that most PhD students – including those who later went on to write the next generation of undergraduate textbooks – didn’t grasp how profoundly it challenged the foundations of neoclassical theory.

Varian started with the vaguest possible statement of the result: ‘Unfortunately […] The aggregate demand function will in general possess no interesting properties […] Hence, the theory of the consumer places no restrictions on aggregate behavior in general.’

The statement ‘no interesting properties’ could imply to the average student that the market demand curve didn’t differ in any substantive way from the individual demand curve – the exact opposite of the theoretical result. The next sentence was more honest, but rather than admitting outright that this meant that the ‘Law of Demand’ didn’t apply at the market level, he immediately reassured students that there was a way to get around this problem, which was to: ‘Suppose that all individual consumers’ indirect utility functions take the Gorman form [… where] the marginal propensity to consume good j is independent of the level of income of any consumer and also constant across consumers […] This demand function can in fact be generated by a representative consumer’ (ibid.: 153–4; emphases added. Curiously the innocuous word ‘generated’ in this edition replaced the more loaded word ‘rationalized’ in the 1984 edition.)

Finally, when discussing aggregate demand, he made a vague and reassuring reference to more technical work: ‘it is sometimes convenient to think of the aggregate demand as the demand of some “representative consumer” […] The conditions under which this can be done are rather stringent, but a discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this book […]’ (Varian 1984: 268).

It’s little wonder that PhD students didn’t realize that these conditions, rather than merely being ‘rather stringent,’ undermined the very foundations of neoclassical economics. They then went on to build ‘representative agent’ models of the macroeconomy in which the entire economy is modeled as a single consumer, believing that these models have been shown to be valid. In fact, the exact opposite is the case.
The modern replacement for Varian is Andreu Mas-Colell’s hyper-mathematical – but utterly non-empirical – Microeconomic Theory (Mas-Colell, Whinston et al. 1995). At one level, this text is much more honest about the impact of the SMD conditions than was Varian’s. In a section accurately described as ‘Anything goes: the Sonnenschein-Mantel-Debreu Theorem,’ Mas-Colell concludes that a market demand curve can have any shape at all, even when derived from consumers whose individual demand curves are downward-sloping:

Can [… an arbitrary function] coincide with the excess demand function of an economy for every p [price …] Of course [… the arbitrary function] must be continuous, it must be homogeneous of degree zero, and it must satisfy Walras’ law. But for any [arbitrary function] satisfying these three conditions, it turns out that the answer is, again, ‘yes.’ (Ibid.: 602)

But still, the import of this result is buried in what appear to the student to be difficult problems in mathematics, rather than a fundamental reason to abandon supply and demand analysis. Earlier, when considering whether a market demand curve can be derived, Mas-Colell begins with the question: ‘When can we compute meaningful measures of aggregate welfare using […] the welfare measurement techniques […] for individual consumers? (ibid.: 116).

He then proves that this can be done when there is ‘a fictional individual whose utility maximization problem when facing society’s budget set would generate the economy’s aggregate demand function’ (ibid.: 116). However, for this to be possible, there must also exist a ‘social welfare function’ which: ‘accurately expresses society’s judgments on how individual utilities have to be compared to produce an ordering of possible social outcomes. We also assume that social welfare functions are increasing, concave, and whenever convenient, differentiable’ (ibid.: 117).

This is already a case of assuming what you wish to prove – any form of social conflict is assumed away – but it’s still not sufficient to generate the result Mas-Colell wants to arrive at. The problem is that the actual distribution of wealth and income in society will determine ‘how individual utilities are compared’ in the economy, and there is no guarantee that this will correspond to this ‘social welfare function.’

The next step in his ‘logic’ should make the truly logical – and the true believers in economic freedom – recoil in horror, but it is in fact typical of the sorts of assumptions that neoclassical economists routinely make to try to keep their vision of a perfectly functioning market economy together. To ensure that the actual distribution of wealth and income matches the social welfare function, Mas-Colell assumes the existence of a benevolent dictator who redistributes wealth and income prior to commerce taking place: ‘Let us now hypothesize that there is a process, a benevolent central authority perhaps, that, for any given prices p and aggregate wealth function w, redistributes wealth in order to maximize social welfare’ (ibid.: 117; emphases added).

So free market capitalism will maximize social welfare if, and only if, there is a benevolent dictator who redistributes wealth prior to trade??? Why don’t students in courses on advanced microeconomics simply walk out at this point?

I surmise that there are three main reasons, the first of which is banal. Mas-Colell’s book is huge – just short of 1,000 pages – and lecturers would cherry-pick the sections they teach. I doubt that most students are exposed to this statement by their instructors, and few are likely to read parts that aren’t required reading for pleasure alone.

Secondly, the entire text is presented as difficult exercises in applied mathematics. Students are probably so consumed with deriving the required answers that they gloss over English-language statements of these assumptions which make it blatantly obvious how insane they are.

Thirdly, by the time students get to this level – normally in PhD programs – they are so locked into the neoclassical ‘assumptions don’t matter’ mindset that I discuss in Chapter 8 that they don’t even worry if an assumption is insane.

If you followed that, then you can understand why this is critically fascinating material that is almost shockingly ignored by nearly everyone who should know better.

#Trump2016 vs #NeverTrump

A short debate on Donald Trump's victorious campaign for the Republican nomination and the nature of conservatism between me and Louise Mensch of Heat Street:

LM: This is obviously a sad day for me and a terrific day for you as Donald Trump is crowned the presumptive nominee by the GOP establishment. Last night, while we were talking with each other, we were discussing the nature of conservatism.

To me, my duty as a conservative is to oppose Donald Trump because he’s not a conservative. I said that, to me, conservatism stands for equality of opportunity. You said in your view, it never had done. How do you define conservatism?

VD: I define conservatism as an attitude more than a coherent ideology. If you look at the history of conservatism, which you as a British individual will be aware, it really is something different to the ideas that underlie the British Conservative Party or the Tory Party. Russell Kirk attempted to turn that inherited tradition into a more coherent ideology, and he came up with the 10 foundational points of what he terms conservatism. So it’s less an ideology than an attitude – and a relative posture.

 Equality of opportunity is merely something that fits that attitude more than it is a founding point of the ideology, in the way that the “labor theory of value” is something that underlies the ideology of socialism.

LM You think that leftism is ideological, but conservatism is only an attitude?

VD: To a certain extent. Socialism is clearly a distinctive set of ideologies. There are of course different socialisms, from Fabianism to Marxism. Progressivism – today’s liberalism – is also a coherent ideology. Conservatism is intrinsically a reaction to other ideologies rather than an ideology of its own.

LM: You don’t think Conservatism stands for anything apart from opposing Liberalism, to use that umbrella term for the left?

VD: Exactly correct. There’s a common saying that today’s conservative is yesterday’s liberal. Conservatism, if we look at the positions that it holds, is usually 20-25 years behind what yesterday’s liberals were. Today, John F. Kennedy would be regarded not only as a Republican – but one who was a little bit to the right.

LM: To me, that seems defeatist for a guy that I see, though I may differ with you on many things, at the very least as an alpha male go-getter. You’re not behind any particular set of principles. You just want to oppose somebody else! Doesn’t that put all the power in their hands?

VD: It does, but it’s not defeatist for me because, as I have repeatedly told people for well over a decade, I am not a conservative. I am an extremist and I’m a radical. That’s why I don’t identify with this conservatism that never conserves anything, that goes from one noble defeat to the next, and has completely failed to conserve anything, even the United States of America.

Read the whole thing there. It was an oral debate, not a written one, but I think I managed to avoid tripping over my convoluted sentence structures for the most part. The bet was funny; I don't think she was quite expecting THAT!

The best argument for Trump

From a comment at Althouse:

Once you've allowed the barbarians through the gates, any swashbuckling ruffian who is willing to pick up a sword and push them back out again is an ally. We can worry about what the city should look like once we've put out the fires and have stopped the barbarians from actively setting more of them.

And, ideally, sent the barbarians back to their homelands. It's not about "illegal aliens". It's not about documentation. It's not about legality. It's about the largest invasion in human history. It's about the biggest mass migration in the recorded history of Man.

Mass repatriation or war. Those are the choices left to both America and the European nations now.

Choose wisely.

Speaker for the butthurt

Matt Walsh rage-quits the Republican Party because Donald Trump has won the nomination:

Goodbye, Republican Party.

I mean that in more ways than one. I’m leaving. You’re dying. I could stick around while you gasp your last pitiful breaths, but what would be the point? I’m certainly more pro-life than you ever were, but when it comes to political parties that have been overtaken by some kind of unintelligible, socially liberal populism, I say pull the plug.

Good riddance. Your wounds are self-inflicted anyway. Clearly you have no desire to live. So goodbye. I am abandoning you on your deathbed, and I feel no shame in it....

The Republican Party is host to many millions of people who fell prostrate before a flamboyant charlatan, despite, or perhaps even because of, his compulsive dishonesty, his moral cowardice, his cruelty and pettiness, his blatant and unapologetic ignorance and disinterest in the most important issues facing our country, his liberalism and so on. As Trump said himself, he could shoot someone in the middle of the street and these people would still follow him.

That’s why I’m leaving. It’s also why you’re dying. It’s not my fault, and it’s not even Trump’s fault. Trump is just a parasite who took advantage of a weakened immune system. He’s the violent case of dysentery that finally kills the frail man who was already sick with a thousand other exotic diseases. The untrained eye may say the man died because he was vomiting blood, but in truth he was vomiting blood because he was dying.

The Republican Party, we should remember, is made up of Republicans. And most of the Republicans are voters, not politicians. So even if nobody else will say it, I must make it clear that I’m leaving because of these voters. Whatever else can be said of citizens who want a man like Trump to run the country, it cannot be said that they’re anything resembling conservative. Nor can it be said that we have anything much in common.

Yesterday, a Republican in Indiana told the media she’s voting for Trump because he’s a “different kind of liar.” The day before, Cruz attempted to have a reasoned dialogue with a couple of Trump supporters who responded to all of the senator’s arguments by shouting slogans and pumping their fists. Trump fans perform even less admirably in cyberspace, where an impassioned collection of anti-Semites and white nationalists work tirelessly to confirm every negative and cartoonish stereotype liberals have ever concocted about Republicans.

I’m not saying they’re all like this, but I’m done answering for the antics and inanities of the Trump squad. They’re not in my party. Or, I suppose they’d respond, I’m not in theirs. And they’re right.

Remind Matt of this every single time he claims to be a Republican in the future. Rub it in Matt's face every single time he claims to speak for Republicans. Remind Matt that he quit, that he very publicly left the party, when he claims to be its true voice.

Because, if there is one thing we have learned about gammas like Matt, it is that they always try to come back and pretend nothing happened.

The only thing that is more pathetic than Matt's gamma rage is the losers in his comments encouraging him to self-immolate.

Kasich is out

Everyone continues to not care.

Will there be war?

In which Stefan Molyneux and I discuss what appears to be looming on the not-so-distant horizon.

We were having some serious Skype issues, so I was forced to use a laptop with a camera, hence the poor video quality. On the plus side, the audio is better this time. Hopefully everything will come together by the third try.

If you wish to download the MP3 instead, you can do so here.

Sexism at the Locus Awards

The SF SJWS are up in arms about sexism at the Locus Awards:

Renay, The Cabal ‎@renay
Surprise, welcome to Systemic Sexism, Locus Awards edition!!

Stephanie A. Allen ‏@stephandrea_
I guess I didn't get the memo that female YA writers don't write SFF

Martha Brockenbrough ‎@mbrockenbrough
Hey, if you read LOCUS, don't worry: women do actually write fantasy and science fiction, even if they didn't make any awards lists.

Martha Brockenbrough ‏@mbrockenbrough
To clarify my earlier tweet about LOCUS's finalists. No books by women made the list in the YA category. This defies belief.

 No wonder they're upset:

FANTASY NOVEL

    Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
    The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard (Roc; Gollancz)
    Wylding Hall, Elizabeth Hand (PS; Open Road)
    The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
    Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

Wait, what? Oh, sorry, apparently this is the problem.

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

    Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey; Harper Voyager UK)
    Half the World, Joe Abercrombie (Del Rey)
    Harrison Squared, Daryl Gregory (Tor)
    Shadowshaper, Daniel José Older (Levine)
    The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett (Harper; Doubleday UK)

For feminists, "sexism" means that somewhere, somehow, a man still has something that a woman thinks she should have.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
 You're obviously forgetting that Joe Abercrombie identifies as a woman now. So much hate! You should be ashamed!

Martha Brockenbrough ‏@mbrockenbrough
Is this a joke? Because I am not getting it.

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
I just think you're being very insensitive and hateful to Ms Abercrombie. Not all women have vaginas, you know.

Martha Brockenbrough ‏@mbrockenbrough
First I have heard that Joe Abercrombie identifies as a woman. If she does, that changes things. 

And to think they say SJWs are no fun!

The refusal to learn

The New York Times is aghast at Donald Trump's challenge to the bifactional ruling party:

This is a moment of reckoning for the Republican Party. It’s incumbent on its leadership to account for the failures and betrayals that led to this, and find a better way to address them than the demagogy on offer.

Republicans haven’t yet begun to grapple with this. Instead they’re falling into line.

Republican leaders have for years failed to think about much of anything beyond winning the next election. Year after year, the party’s candidates promised help for middle-class people who lost their homes, jobs and savings to recession, who lost limbs and well-being to war, and then did next to nothing. That Mr. Trump was able to enthrall voters by promising simply to “Make America Great Again” — but offering only xenophobic, isolationist or fantastical ideas — is testimony to how thoroughly they reject the politicians who betrayed them.

Now, myopic as ever, Republican leaders are talking themselves into supporting Mr. Trump. At a party retreat in Florida last month, Mr. Trump’s adviser Paul Manafort, brought in to make the candidate seem safer to the old guard, assured them that Mr. Trump will better prepare himself for the presidency. “That was all most of these guys needed to hear,” said an operative in the room. “Maybe he’s trainable.” But within a day, Mr. Trump was back to making vile comments at his rallies. In his confused foreign policy address, he demonstrated nothing but a willful refusal to learn.

Xenophobia and isolationism are to be vastly preferred to the treasonous fantasies of the Republican and Democratic politicians alike. There is nothing confusing about Trump's foreign policy: what is hard to understand about America First for anyone who doesn't have other objectives in mind?

If the Republican Party doesn't fall in line behind Donald Trump, it might as well cease to exist and its members can go where they belong, to the ironically-named, anti-democratic Democratic Party.

And to all those conservatives and Republicans crying about how Trump is certain to lose to Clinton, ask yourself this: why doesn't the great left-liberal standard sound a whole lot happier about Trump being the Republican nominee? Do they sound like people who are confident of victory?

Let's hope Donald Trump continues to refuse to learn from the USA's failed, anti-American political class.