A prescription for Africa

Peter Grant provides his thoughts on aiding Africa:

Based on my extensive experience of Africa, I suggest there are two - and only two - ways in which Western aid should be focused in the short term.  The first is education.  Teach people the basics of how to think, how to use their brains - and do so in a way that is tailored to their current levels of intelligence.  Don't expect a teenager with an IQ of 70 to function at the same level as someone with an IQ of 100.  He must be taught things he can do - and at which he can succeed - that are commensurate with where he's at right now.  That way, he won't get discouraged and abandon his studies.  He can be set tasks that grow progressively more complex and more difficult, but not at a level he can't master.  His children will go further, and his children's children further still . . . but he won't.  He can't.  That's the brutal reality of the situation.

The second way in which aid can be useful is in providing basic infrastructure that is operable, and maintainable, and sustainable, by people in the IQ range we've discussed.  Examples:

• It's pointless giving them a complex engine-powered pump to bring up water from a well if they aren't capable of maintaining it.  Rather give them a hand-operated pump, one they can understand, and which they can repair themselves if it breaks down.  It's more and harder work to use it, but it's also more practicable for them.  When it comes to health care, providing mosquito nets and clean water and hygiene education is far more important than providing anti-AIDS drug cocktails.  Sure, without the latter, people will die;  but without the former, many more people will die. Invest limited resources where they'll do the most good for the greatest number.  Yes, that means some people will be condemned to die.  That's economic and cultural reality in Africa.  Live with it.
• I've seen several entrepreneurs in Africa take discarded Western high technology, 'dumb it down', and use it with great success.  Example:  pedal-powered washing machines (which we've discussed here before).  Old, broken-down automatic washing machines are connected to good old-fashioned bicycles mounted on frames, using drive belts made from locally-produced leather or cloth.  Result;  the pedalers earn a living, local women can wash their clothes much faster and more conveniently than taking them down to the local river (where they're frequently preyed on by crocodiles), and the entrepreneur who put the whole idea together becomes a Big Man in the local economy - and is able to use his profits for other useful economic ideas.  Moral of the story:  find individuals with that sort of entrepreneurial drive, and help them.  That aid will 'trickle down' into the local community and benefit everyone.
• The corollary to the above is that aid must not - repeat, must not - be given to government officials and bureaucrats who'll siphon it off into their own pockets.  Corruption, nepotism and dishonesty are not just rife in Africa - they're a way of life.  Tragically, too many agencies and large aid organizations (all of which should know better) are willing to let dishonest governments and bureaucrats handle aid money, so as not to offend local sensibilities or be seen as 'neo-colonial' in their attitudes.  Worse, some of them openly bribe governments and bureaucrats, figuring that it's better to do that in order to ensure that at least some of the aid they provide reaches those for whom it's intended.  Often that proportion is ten per cent or less - the rest lines venal pockets further up the food chain.
• Finally, aid must be distributed in a way that is accountable.  Money and supplies must be accounted for when they arrive, while being sent to their final destination, and upon delivery.  The way they're used must be monitored, and any discrepancy must result in disciplinary action - i.e. the withholding of further aid from the miscreant(s) involved.  There can be no blind acceptance of someone's bona fides unless their actions match their words.  There can be no resigned, shoulder-shrugging acceptance of 'shrinkage' without a major effort to minimize losses.  If that isn't done, the venality of Africa will soon ensure that most (if not all) of the aid sent is diverted into fat-cat pockets.  (How do you think Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Zaire, managed to embezzle between $4 billion and $15 billion during his time in power?  It sure wasn't his salary!)

There is a third way in which aid might be profitably spent - but it'll never fly, because it's 100% politically incorrect.  That way would be to hire mercenaries - probably former servicemen from Western armies and their allies - to pacify an area, ensuring that aid workers can operate safely and without coercion.  They can raise and train a local militia if responsible individuals can be found, but that's unlikely at first.  It'll be more important for them to proactively attack local thugs and gangs.  That'll be an object lesson to everybody - "Get with the program, or get dead!"  In an environment where life is so cheap, and atrocities are everyday occurrences, that's probably the only way in which this could work.  However, the reaction to that by liberals and progressives would be so outraged that, as I said, this idea will never fly.

While I agree with Peter's diagnosis, I don't agree with his prescription. Education will not change one single damn thing in Africa because it cannot. The intelligence gap between Europe and Africa is genetic and only several centuries of ruthless eugenics will raise the average intelligence of the latter continent. In fact, despite more people being more educated than ever before, the dysgenic social structure of both the European nations and the USA has already reduced their average intelligence levels; the gap is being reduced, but by lowering the average intelligence levels in Europe and the USA.

That is why we are seeing the Western countries gradually start resembling the better third-world countries. Over time, they will start to resemble Africa, and similar behavioral patterns will begin to exert themselves. The only good news, if it can be described as that, is that the Western warlords of the future will likely be considerably smarter than their African counterparts, so perhaps there will be the occasional Singapore that can serve as the core of a new high-IQ civilization.

And since  the current population explosion in Africa is almost certainly dysgenic, I expect that the average intelligence will actually decline in Africa and the situation will get even worse there, with widespread cannibalism and other practices even more depraved and demonic than mutu beginning to appear.

The more I look at the global situation, the more I am convinced that those in the 1980s who thought Japan and China would dominate the world were correct, they were simply about 100 years early. The fall of the Soviet Union was not the triumph of Western liberal democracy, it was its last chance, but instead of taking that chance, the liberal democracies slashed their own throats. Yes, Japan and China are both economic disasters, but they are still smart, homogeneous nations and they will bounce right back from the next economic crash. Most of the nations of the West are not, and therefore they will not be able to do so.

That, I think, is why China is biding its time. It has no need to defeat the USA. It need only wait and let the USA finish destroying itself.

This is why we de-troll

There is absolutely no point in tolerating endless repetitions of the same argument over and over again from rhetoric-limited SJWs who cannot learn from information and whose thick skulls remain impenetrable to facts, logic, science, and history. Case in point:

Sorry, but I happen to agree with the sentiment that many of the so-called "anti-amnesty" voices here and elsewhere are in fact, racist. I understand Ace's use of the word "spics"- I do the same thing, in an ironic sense when I make the point that for many of you, "illegal aliens" is a code word for "dirty fucking Mexicans".

I'm not slamming Mexicans, I'm slamming your attitude towards them and translating some weaselwords into their true meaning, without the code.
Posted by: docweasel at March 29, 2008 03:05 PM


Ah, the old "some of my best friends are dirty fucking Mexicans" ploy. I don't know about individuals. Its possible you are not. I'm saying that by and large the "anti-amnesty" Malkinite argument is that Mexicans deserve special attacks and exclusion is that 1. Mexicans commit a lot of crimes (while posting anecdotal news items about illegal immigrant crime 2. Mexicans use a lot of services and cost the community more money than they are worth 3. Mexicans are uneducated and unskilled and unworthy of being Americans 4. go back to Mexico, we don't want your culture here, we don't want your language here, assimilate and "act white" or you dont deserve citizenship.

Maybe not you personally. But taht's the way the argument has been framed. And I call racism. A lot of you say "I love Mexicans my best friend is Mexican I work with Mexicans I love Mexicans, btw, fuck Mexicans, we don't need any more in this country, expel as many as possible and lock the rest out.

The bottom line is, I don't believe the people who make racist arguments against Mexican immigration, then say they aren't Mexicans: face it, live with it, if you try to STEREOTYPE an entire ethnicity by thea few criminals you are a fucking racist, period. You don't like it and you reject it, but you are one anyway, motherfucker.
Posted by: docweasel at March 29, 2008 03:32 PM

And just 8 years later:

That image posted at the top of post isn't what I'd call "Christian"- I'm the last one to be over-sensitive or pulling the race card, but that image is flat out racist.

No one who calls themselves Christian or bemoans the loss of Christian ethics has any business posting something like that, or else they have a thin grasp of exactly what Christianity is in the first place.

I only started reading this site regularly a few months ago when a link from somewhere else brought me here. If this is the tone I don't guess this is the place for me.
Posted by: docweasel August 16, 2016 4:04 AM

Clearly the very last one to pull out the race card. SJWs ALWAYS lie. The appropriately named docweasel is banned for SJW. We neither want nor need SJWs here.

The Gathering of the Shoggoths

I'm a little sorry to miss the spectacular gathering of the science fiction SJWs now taking place in Kansas City. The lumbering of these majestic beasts, their euphonious cries for MORE DIVERSITY and MORE PEOPLE OF COLOR, and the distinctive odors they give off as a part of their annual mating ritual simply cannot be truly appreciated at a distance. Although I do detect just a whiff of Eau de Zoloft from the grinning larval one in the front row.

What do you think the over/under on psychotropic drug prescriptions is in that bunch there, 45? By the way, when we talked in the past about the shoggoths known to inhabit File 770, the photo above is to whom we are referring. The best part is that these are the lesser SF-SJWs, they are the mere fans. The greater SF-SJWs, the writers, really need to be seen to be believed.

No, upon further reflection, that's not the best part. The best part is all of that very important diversity on display.

Hillary Clinton is perfectly healthy

And it is a pernicious lie by desperate Trumpkins to suggest otherwise. The truth is that her new mobility scooter only enhances her already formidable capabilities.

The evil of innocents abroad

Sometimes, it doesn't turn out as well for the do-gooders as it did in the #1 bestselling literary satire, The Missionaries, as Peter Grant, South African military veteran and witness to many an atrocity in Africa, testifies:

I've seen this so many times in Africa that the memories are seared into my mind . . . yet the 'innocents abroad' keep on going there in the expectation that because they're aid workers, they'll be respected by the locals.  "In the event of trouble, the people we're helping will protect us.  Everything will be fine."  I was told that, in those specific words, by a medical volunteer in West Africa . . . two weeks before she was raped to death (including being raped vaginally and anally by multiple bayonets, after her assailants had had their fun) by Foday Sankoh's RUF thugs in Sierra Leone.  She was an attractive woman when I last saw her.  Two weeks later, her torn, burned, sliced-open corpse was a nightmare.  I could not identify her by sight.  It took dental records and a forensic pathologist to do that.

People, if you visit a part of the world - not just Africa, but anywhere - where human life is cheap, where torture and rape are everyday occurrences, where tribal and/or religious and/or ethnic divisions are excuses for savagery and bestiality of the worst kind, then the odds are pretty good that you're going to experience those realities for yourself.  The locals don't care that you're there to help them.  They don't care about your high-minded ideals, or your purity of vision of the new Utopia you're trying to build for them.  To them, you're "other".

Helping Africa is one of the very worst things any Western individual can do. Possibly the most evil individual of the 20th century is not Hitler, Mao, or Stalin, but Norman Borlaug, the so-called Father of the Green Revolution, who is credited with saving one billion Africans Indians and Pakistanis from dying of starvation.

Guess what the consequence of that particular piece of idiocy is going to be? Borlaugh's Nobel Peace Prize will eventually come to be seen as far more ironic than Barack Obama's.

In 1971, the population of Nigeria was 51 million. Thanks to Borlaug's innovations and Western assistance, it is estimated that the population of Nigeria will be 400 million. The UN estimates that it will be the world's third-most populous country, behind China and India.

With the highest rate of population growth, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. During this period, the populations of 28 African countries are projected to more than double, and by 2100, ten African countries are projected to have increased by at least a factor of five: Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia.

My expectation is that considerably more than one billion people are going to die as a direct result of the do-gooders interventions in Africa. And not all of them are going to be Africans either.

They've learned nothing

A Baby Boomer reacts to her son telling her that she was a terrible mother:

Back in the Seventies, when I was juggling a thriving business with early motherhood, there was nothing I cherished more than a cuddle with my sleepy babies in the middle of the night. No matter how long my day, if either of them woke crying I would bring them, freshly changed and fed, into our bed. There, I would drink in their delicious baby scent and we would all drift off together. Bliss!

Yes, running the country’s leading fashion PR agency meant not being home in time to cook my children’s supper, but that didn’t mean I loved them any less fiercely. Nor did I think for one moment that my daily absences necessarily made me a ‘bad parent’.

But it appears I was horribly wrong. For when I opened the Mail last week, I had quite a shock: there was an article by my son, Joshua Howie, now 40, declaring me an ‘absolutely awful’ mother who was ‘too selfish to raise children’.

Perhaps what hurt the most was not knowing it was coming. If my son did it to promote his career as a stand-up comedian, you’d think he’d have asked me — a PR guru — for advice. You might think, considering I’m the supposed inspiration for the character of Edina in the very funny and successful Absolutely Fabulous, I would be used to comedians using aspects of my larger-than-life existence to comedic effect. But this time I felt the joke was on me.

Far be it from me to criticise my son, whom I love dearly, but many baby boomers who read his article didn’t hold back. Understandably, they took offence at the suggestion that our generation made terrible parents, who neglected their children while scaling the dizzy heights of glamorous careers and filling their ‘gold-plated’ pension pots.

I’m not trying to claim that the baby boomers were always models of parental perfection. I certainly wasn’t, and I still harbour huge amounts of guilt about the things I missed out on when my children were young.

The funny thing is the way that her first response to the charge that she was an absolutely awful mother and too selfish to raise children is to talk about how wonderful she felt on days that she didn't even put them to bed.

Just to be clear, my parents were great, so I know very well that not all Baby Boomer parents were like that. (And it is really not necessary to explain to the author of two books on economics that there is a difference between macro generalities and micro examples.) But it's still an amusing defense that misses the point, even though the chances are not insignificant that the whole thing was concocted by the mother as a PR stunt.

Nevertheless, the idea that Baby Boomers were, on average, terrible parents is not out of line, especially considering the way that many of them are intentionally not leaving inheritances for their children, in either the USA or Britain.

The children of baby boomers are heading towards a financial shock after it was revealed their parents aim to spend all their cash rather than pass it on. Baby boomers – generally referred to as those born between 1947 and 1964 – are often seen as the ‘selfish generation’ because they have benefited from good wages and rising property values before retiring on gold-plated pensions. But now a study has shown that their children are facing poverty in old age.

They're not leaving much of a country behind them either. And while the demographic demolition of the United States cannot be blamed on the Baby Boomers, as it happened in 1965, the fact is that they collectively celebrated it rather than corrected it. They were too excited about having ethnic restaurants and whole new ways to virtue-signal their superiority to their parents to consider the long-term implications for their children and grand-children.

UPDATE: The son's article to which the Baby Boomer mother was responding:

Mum was the epitome of the Eighties career woman; on the phone to the office within 20 minutes of my birth, she didn’t get off again until I was 16. And during that time, when more than 20 nannies raised me, I have not one recollection of Mum ever playing with me or reading me a bedtime story.

I love that so much

From Steve Sailer's site:

The New Yorker recently inquired “How Fast Would Usain Bolt Run the Mile?“, only to find out according to his agent that “Usain has never run a mile.”

As my old coach used to say, sprinters are born, not made. When I ran track for Bucknell, the rest of the team used to openly mock what they called "the sprinter's jog", which is considerably slower than a normal walking pace. Of course, if you were facing another sub-25-second 200-meter repetition as soon as you finished jogging 100 meters, you'd jog pretty damn slow too.

Two of my roommates used to run the occasional 5k, and some girls once asked why I never ran one with them. After they stopped laughing, one of them pointed to a nearby lamp post and said:

"See that lamp post?"

"Yeah."

"He can get there faster than you would believe. Now see that one?" He pointed to one a little way up the hill.

"Yeah?"

"You can beat him to that one. Also, he won't make it that far."

In fairness, I did run a 5k once a few years after that. I barely finished in front of a woman who had just given birth three days before. I don't recall the time, but I do remember vomiting afterwards.


UPDATE: Very disappointed to see Alison Felix robbed of the 400m gold. She clearly won that race; diving at the finish line should not be permitted in sprints or dashes as it is much too dangerous. She's been my favorite sprinter for years, as her style is very pretty and graceful. She'd have won gold in the 200m too if she hadn't been injured at the qualifiers.

The conservative void

Conservatism, by definition, is unprincipled, anti-ideological pose that relies on rhetoric rather than dialectic. It was literally defined that way by the man who articulated American conservatism, Russell Kirk:

Being neither a religion nor an ideology, the body of opinion termed conservatism possesses no Holy Writ and no Das Kapital to provide dogmata. So far as it is possible to determine what conservatives believe, the first principles of the conservative persuasion are derived from what leading conservative writers and public men have professed during the past two centuries. After some introductory remarks on this general theme, I will proceed to list ten such conservative principles.

Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.

The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.

Translation: Conservatism is FEELZ.

Doesn't that explain a great deal about both the conservative failure of the last 60 years as well as their inept, rhetorical, fainting-couch responses to the rise of the Alt-Right?

The amusing thing is that they consider themselves "the hard-headed realists", but they don't even have an ideological foundation. Their intellectual movement isn't even built on sand! It's built on "a state of mind", something that is intrinsically malleable and subject to emotional manipulation.

Say what you will about National Socialism, but at least it was an ethos! Conservatism is intellectual nihilism, it is an ideological void.

If you are of the Right, stop calling yourself a conservative. It's absurd. Not only has conservatism failed to conserve anything, it was as doomed from the start as the atheists attempting to fight a religious war without a religion.

One can't win a gunfight without a gun, and one can't win a cultural war without an ideology.

Jerry Pournelle, for one, understands this.

Conservatism isn’t an ideology; Russell Kirk called his book “The Conservative Mind”, and when specifics were demanded he wrote a book for his times, A Program For Conservatives; not an ideology.

EEK! the cuckservative squeaked

Docweasel needs to virtue-signal harder. I think there may have been a few Chileans near the Antarctic side of South America who didn't hear him:

That image posted at the top of post isn't what I'd call "Christian"- I'm the last one to be over-sensitive or pulling the race card, but that image is flat out racist.

No one who calls themselves Christian or bemoans the loss of Christian ethics has any business posting something like that, or else they have a thin grasp of exactly what Christianity is in the first place.

I only started reading this site regularly a few months ago when a link from somewhere else brought me here. If this is the tone I don't guess this is the place for me.

Cucks are always liars. In 87 comments, he is, quite literally, the very first one to be oversensitive and to pull out the race card.

Docweasel is a good programmed little cuck who believes "thou shalt not criticize minorities or portray them in any unflattering manner" is the 11th Commandment. And he just knows that the avoidance of being called racist is the true Christian's highest priority. He would call Jesus Christ himself racist for comparing Samaritans to dogs.

This definitely isn't the place for you, Docweasel. The Hell on Earth that is being made is the place for you. You would do well to leave. You and your Churchian kind are not welcome here. Go signal your virtue somewhere else.

As I once wrote on Twitter, I don't hate blacks, I just don't expect them to be white. What I hate is white virtue-signalers. And more from Twitter:

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the god now worshipped by Churchians is Equality. To them, Jesus Christ is the way to Equality.

Ming the Merciless ‏@_Emperor_Ming_
It's like the Left subverted the Church and turned it into a vehicle to advance their agenda, or something!

Supreme Dark Lord ‏@voxday
If only someone had warned Christians about false teachers infiltrating the Church in order to mislead them!

Consider the following train of logic:

1. Christians are warned that false teachers would infiltrate the Church.
2. What many Church leaders are teaching today is observably different from historical Christian teachings and contradicts the Bible itself.
3. Who, then, are the false teachers? 

English/Australian accent wanted

We're looking for a male narrator for The Missionaries. If you have a genuine posh English accent, or Australian accent, and you're interested, shoot me an email. No American voice actors who can do accents for this one, please.

Milo corners Twitter

Either Twitter is desperate or they have some seriously incompetent lawyers handling @nero's data request.:

Twitter attempted to dodge Milo Yiannopoulos’ data request by falsely claiming that he lives in the United States of America and is therefore ineligible to receive the information.

“Twitter International Company provides the Twitter Services to individuals who live outside the United States of America. We understand that you live in the United States,” said Twitter in their reply today, despite the fact that Yiannopoulos has permanent residence in the United Kingdom and remains a citizen there.

“As a result, we are not a data controller in respect of your personal data. Consequently, we will return your postal order, in the sum of €6.35, to you.”

Yiannopoulos replied shortly after, stating:

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

I do not live in the United States. I am a permanent UK resident at the address listed on my letter, and a citizen of the United Kingdom.

You are clearly prevaricating by waiting until now to make this statement as opposed to making simple inquiries as to my country of residence.

Twitter has the choice of waiving the EUR 6.35 or paying the shipping and handling costs of sending a new money order, which will be EUR 7.

As a matter of interest, given that you have my UK address, where did you send the money order back to? To dispatch it to a UK address seems quite at odds with your proposition that I am a resident of the United States.

You have 21 days from the date of the original Subject Access Request to reply in full. This situation has not changed. I look forward to receiving the information requested within the time frame permitted by law.

Yours

Milo Yiannopoulos”

Seriously, who advised them to try to play that sort of ridiculous game? I've noticed that American companies often fail to take foreign courts very seriously, as if they assume they are merely some sort of state-level court that can be beaten at the federal level. No wonder so many of them end up paying massive fines.

I know for a fact that Milo's been in London recently anyhow. It's just a bizarre, time-wasting response by Twitter.

The fruits of cuckservative Churchianity

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
- Matthew 7:15-20

If an apple tree brings forth a withered pear, it is not a good apple tree, but a corrupt one. So it is with men.

There was a time when Americans considered America blessed by God. What sort of madman would dare to make that claim now?

UPDATE: the cartoon was created and commissioned by Faith and Heritage. Clearly an organization that understands the concept of good rhetoric.

Not so, however, with ‘cuckservative.’ Not only does it not suffer from the vagueries of its close equivalents; it also cuts much deeper because its targets cannot be in doubt. It lays finger on the more personal dimensions of treason – the relinquishment of one’s own house, wife, and children to invasive predators. The power of its poignancy lies in the fact that it highlights the abdication of a man’s most intimate duties. It brings home the implications of liberalism on border and race issues as violating the principle of 1 Timothy 5:8, disregard of one’s own family. It impugns the manhood of its subjects, and concomitantly any and all professions of a man’s Christian faith as well. So yes, the acerbic potency of this word is couched in the most basic allegiances and undergirded by the biblical understanding of familial duty. Even if it would seem indecipherably archaic to post-family Marxists, those yet anchored to traditional categories, however so tenuously, still comprehend the gravity and accuracy of the charge.

The caterwauling it has evoked from so many so-called conservatives is indicative of not only its power, but the identity of those to whom it most applies. As the old chestnut goes, “When you pitch a rock into a pack of dogs the one that yelps is the one you hit.” Its targets simply cannot be mistaken. Yes, they may cavil that allusions to cuckoldry are somehow just not cricket. But none putting on the most delicate Victorian airs presently ever imagined the term cuckold as improper before now; in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or the whole roster of English literati since, it appears no one ever took the term ‘cuckold’ as unchristian, uncharitable, or inappropriate till the dawning of the age of the Social Justice Warrior and Neo-Christianity. Clearly, the reason so many Beltway Conservatives* balk at it is that it crystallizes the depth of their betrayal and heaps burning coals upon their heads.

I have to say, I kind of like these guys.

Discredit. Disqualify. Deplatform.

It's interesting to see how cuckservatives and conservatives are rapidly adopting SJW tactics too. Unfortunately, like the good moderates they are, they've adopted them in order to utilize them against those whose side they claim to be. This little rant from Patrick Frey, who is attempting to convince Tom Woods to stop interacting with me, is a good example:

Patrick Frey [Original post 8/15/2016]
I know little about Vox Day, other than that he told my friend Ken White, a great man and free speech warrior who has also written courageously about his struggles with mental illness, to "get off the Internet for [his] own good" because "no place for the depressed, the bipolar, or the schizophrenic." I know VD loves to beat his chest about how "ruthless" he is ("We won't hesitate to strike at your vulnerabilities" is an actual quote -- ooh! he's going to unleash the dreaded Internet Attack on his enemies!) And now, VD is explaining how American nationalism is really White nationalism:

I guess I'll listen to Tom's conversations with him, in which (so far) he manages to come across less like the rank jackass he has always been in his interactions with Ken White. But I'd really rather see Tom, whom I admire greatly, spending less time interacting with a guy who has acted like such a cretin online.

To be clear: I'm obviously not trying to tell Tom how to run his show. If he wants to give a platform to the likes of VD or Milo, that's obviously his choice. I hope I can express my extreme dislike of these people forthrightly without it seeming like an attack on Tom -- who, again, has added much of value to my life.

Seriously, though -- just read through this blog post by Vox Day attacking my friend Ken White, and see if you can refrain from laughing at the way VD sells himself as Big Bad Tough Guy Vox Day. It really is tough to take this guy seriously.

Let me see if I have this straight. It is really tough to take me seriously, therefore it is imperative for Tom Woods to stop taking me talking to me lest he acquire unserious cooties or something. The threat of striking at one's vulnerabilities is something to laugh at, but simply observing that a mentally unstable individual is, in fact, mentally unstable and is behaving in a manner indicative of mental instability, is an outrage to be decried.

Does he really think that Tom Woods, of all people, is liable to fall for this sort of nonsense?

Look, it's not my fault that Ken White is mentally unstable. Nor is it my fault that, as a consequence of his being crazy, Ken White has repeatedly chosen to take unprovoked shots at me. It's not as if I'm outing the poor guy as a whack job; if White hadn't a) written about being institutionalized, and, b) taken unprovoked shots at Roosh, I wouldn't know anything about it.

It's not as if I read him or pay any attention to White. He may be back in the funny farm already for all I know.

What I do know is that I have absolutely no time for suggestions concerning with whom I should, or should not, associate myself. I've noticed that the bigger one's platform becomes, the more people will try to hijack it and offer unsolicited guidance. I've had people try to talk me into disavowing Roosh, Louise Mensch, and more recently, Ricky Vaughan. But no matter who they are, my answer is always the same: no.

I pay no heed to thought police, speech police, tone police, or relationship police. Anyhow, I suspect Tom will be less than concerned about Patrick's demands:

Tom Woods ‏@ThomasEWoods
Social Justice Warriors: who they are, and how to deal with them -- my conversation with @VoxDay

Ty & Aliyah ‏@StopDividingUs7
And of course, typical supremacist making you pay to listen / view.

Tom Woods ‏@ThomasEWoods
Typical genius unable to press PLAY on a free podcast.

Ty & Aliyah ‏@StopDividingUs7
No, it requires viewers to download a bunch of your crap first. That is a heavy price to pay.

Tom Woods ‏@ThomasEWoods
No, it doesn't. You are seriously inept. You just press the play button.

I'll admit it. I laughed.

UPDATE: Patrick Frey is doing his best to create a wedge:

VD also says Tom Woods is "considerably less serious as an economist than I had imagined him to be" ... again, watching a sort of middling intellect deem himself to be smarter than Woods and Sowell is amusing. 

"Didja hear what Janey said about you, Tina? Didja hear?"

I don't know how to break it to Mr. Frey, but based on my interactions with Mr. Sowell, I'm at least a standard deviation more intelligent than him. Tom Woods is quite sharp, and I have a lot of respect for him, but nevertheless, he's not up to speed on free trade yet. There is no shame or insult in that; Ian Fletcher certainly got there before I did.

I have no doubt that Tom Woods will eventually as well.

Well, who needs roads?

Tell me again how immigration is good for the economy:

Migrants wielding bats and knives have been smashing up vehicles on roads near Calais as their owners sit in traffic, reportedly “just for fun”. Local residents are warning others to avoid the area, saying that the migrants are not even checking to see whether children are in the vehicles before they set upon them.
One resident has posted pictures to Facebook of her brother-in-law’s car, which sustained more than €500 worth of damage when over a dozen migrants set about it with bats, completely smashing a side mirror and the rear window, and shattering the windscreen.

“You’re leaving work and then you’re attacked by migrant shits just for fun – it disgusts me!” commented Maëva Mayla, in a post which has been shared by more than 6,000 people.

“Tell your relatives so that they can avoid it happening to them,” she advises, before appealing for others who have experienced similar attacks to come forward so that they could mount a joint compensation claim.

A number of people have left comments of support, and expressing anger at the situation in Calais. Nathalie Brioit said it is “a shame they have all the rights,” while Marine Gabrielle confessed “I no longer use the highway as I’m so scared.”\

Let reason and outdated economic theory be silent when experience contradicts it.

Debunking Snopes

A number of people have referred to the Snopes "debunking" of the Hiroshima-Detroit comparison, failing to realize that a) it doesn't address blacks at all, and, b) I wrote my post in the first place because the supposed debunking was so feeble.

Here is an accurate summary of the Snopes argument.

1. The picture is not of modern-day Hiroshima.

the next image in the set supposedly depicts modern-day Hiroshima — except that it doesn't. It's actually a snapshot taken from the Landmark Tower Sky Garden in Yokohama, Japan

That's true of the pictures to which Snopes was referring. It's not true of the pictures I used, which one can see is clearly of past and present Hiroshima. Furthermore, Hiroshima is in very good shape today, as Snopes itself admits. One down.

2. The picture of modern Detroit is only of one building.

the thing to note about the use of this image to portray Detroit as a locus of Hiroshima-like devastation is that all we actually see is one long-abandoned, crumbling building. It doesn't make the case.

That one picture doesn't conclusively prove the case, but it correctly demonstrates the actual case intended. Detroit's population is now 36.7 percent of its 1950s peak and is now 83 percent black. 95 percent of the whites who resided there in 1950 have left. The city filed for bankruptcy in 2013. "aerial photos reveal the tiny urban island that is left - a clutter of high-rises surrounded by empty housing plots now covered in grass." Two down.

3. The picture of Navin Field is from the 1930s, not the 1940s.

Lastly, we're shown a photo supposedly depicting Detroit in its mid-1940s heyday — except that it was taken in the mid-1930s

So what? That only makes it that much more clear how advanced Detroit was, and how far Detroit has fallen since. This is petty pedantry, as the relevant point is still demonstrated. Three down.

4. It was the Democrats fault, but it wasn't only their fault.

Did Democrats and Democratic policies play some role in the fall of Detroit? Surely they did. Every Detroit mayor since 1962 has been a Democrat, after all. But Republicans held the seat for the 12 years prior to that, from 1950 through 1961. The Packard plant whose hollowed-out remains were displayed above closed its doors during that time. Whatever blame is to be allotted to politicians must be shared by both Democrats and Republicans on the national level, as well.

Here is a tip: when you admit that the case being made is correct, even in part, it is not a debunking. Four down. There is not one single effective point that was made in this so-called "debunking".

The ironic thing about those responding to my modified Detroit-Hiroshima comparison with "Snopes says" is that I rebutted the cuckservative "Democrat policies" explanation for the difference between the two cities more effectively than Snopes did by pointing out that if Democrats are responsible for the decline of Detroit, Hiroshima should be even worse, because it was ruled by Socialists for most of the latter half of the 20th century.

Are there other factors that have contributed to the decline of Detroit beyond the fact that 478,112 blacks moved into the city between 1900 and 1960? Certainly. But that doesn't change the fact that if a city has a choice between being hit by an atomic bomb or acquiring 774,485 new black residents, the available evidence strongly indicates that the former will prove vastly preferable to the latter in the long term.

Book of the Week

VFM, can you get me the contact information for Simon Nicholas Hawke? Preferably telephone, but I'll settle for email. I can find his street address, but telephone numbers are restricted to IP addresses outside the USA. I cannot believe this guy's books are not all in print. I loved the Time Wars books when I was younger; the first one, The Ivanhoe Gambit, is this week's Book of the Week.

Reality TV and the fall of civilization

James Delingpole observes that troglodyte culture matters even to the highbrow, because politics is downstream of culture, in The Spectator:

‘But why do you even care about this crap?’ people sometimes ask me. They’re the same sort of people who, were they living in Rome circa 476, would be congratulating themselves on how bloody marvellous aqueducts and hypocausts and testudo formations are. Yes indeed. But that was then and unfortunately we’re living in now. The barbarians are through the gates, imposing their weird, alien values, but the forces of civilisation are holding their noses and looking the other way because they find modern culture so vulgar, ugly and incomprehensible.

What I think should trouble us most about the Biggins eviction is the perverse moral inversion it represents. Instead of inhabiting a universe where sticks and stones may break our bones but words can never hurt us, we’ve been ushered into one where the language you use carries more weight than the way you behave. As a writer and English literature graduate I ought to be delighted by this — except that the new rule seems to have been invented by incredibly thick people with no sense of tone, nuance or context.

At the time of the Leveson inquiry, there were lots of wise, nicely turned, historically literate articles in civilised journals about the importance of free speech and how defending it must of necessity include protecting the right to offend. The problem is that the only people who read them were clever, sensible, well-balanced types like us. Unfortunately, we’re not the ones who make the rules.

Why do you think the Big Brother bosses axed Biggins? They’re rather less concerned about what Mick Hume, Claire Fox, Douglas Murray or Nick Cohen might write in an erudite essay on the significance of Areopagitica and the importance of ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ than they are about what a noisy minority of pigshit-thick but Taleban-zealous social justice warriors might say on social media.

This is why it matters when the Hugo Awards anoint mediocre SJW detritus as the best that the field has to offer. This is why it matters that we tear down the gatekeepers, we tear down the SJW-infested institutions, and we replace them with new ones. This is why it matters when even people we despise are attacked by those who seek to control them and us, and why it is important for us to defend them regardless of how we might feel about them.

Delingpole understands this, but then, he is demonstrably well-read on the subject.

How do we resist this loathsome trend? Well, the first step is to acknowledge that it’s happening; and the second is to create a stink. I’d highly recommend reading Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie, which outlines how these activists operate (‘point and shriek’, ‘isolate and swarm’) and then describes how to defeat them. Absolutely key is refusing to let these malign professional grievance-mongers set the terms of the debate.

And we're not. Read the whole thing. Have you noticed that the Alt-Right is beginning to drive the public discourse on a few small issues here and there? That's just the start. The mainstream media is on its heels, forced to respond to the issues that are being raised by a new generation of social media that is filling the role that AM talk radio once did. The difference is that while the talk radio guys were still subject to gatekeepers in the form of station owners and the FCC, we are only limited by the potential biases of Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Also, an AM signal doesn't carry very far, but the Internet reaches to the ends of the Earth.

Castalia New Releases

This is a very good time to sign up for the Castalia House New Release mailing list if you don't subscribe to it already, as we have at least three books coming out in the next four weeks, and we regularly offer free bonus books to subscribers who buy new releases on the first two days of publication.

We don't spam, we don't sell email addresses, and we only send out emails when we have a new release coming out. So, if you are interested in one or more of our authors, from Tom Kratman, John C. Wright, and Jerry Pournelle to Nick Cole, Peter Grant, and Rod Walker, I'd encourage you to sign up for it.

All you have to do is enter your email and hit Subscribe. It will take you to a page informing you that you will receive an email asking you for confirmation; it can take up to 10 minutes for the confirmation email to arrive, so don't resubscribe if it doesn't show up right away.

New Release Mailing List

Email Address

Reinventing the tank

There isn't going to be any ground war in Russia. There had better not be, anyway:

Russian experiences in Ukraine—where both sides are using upgraded Soviet-built tanks and anti-tank weapons—have shown that despite the best active, reactive and passive armor available, a tank will eventually be penetrated. “We discovered that no matter how skillful the crew, the tank would get up to ten hits,” Pukhov said during a luncheon at the Center for the National Interest in Washington, D.C.—which is the foreign policy think-tank that publishes The National Interest—on July 26. “Even if you have perfect armor—active, passive. In one case it will save you from one hit, in another case from two hits, but you’ll still get five hits and you’re done. That’s why now you’re supposed to have some kind of Tank 2.0.”

The Tank 2.0, as Pukhov describes it, is not the T-14 Armata—which despite its advanced unmanned turret and active protection systems—is still a more or less a conventional tank design. “I know Russians are thinking about this new tank and this tank is not Armata,” Pukhov said. “It’s what we call among us Boyevaya Mashina Podderzhki Tankov [Tank Support Fighting Machine]—but in fact it’s not a Podderzhki Tankov, but which can protect itself. So there is a serious debate about it.”

Later, during a one-on-one interview at the Center the same day, I asked Pukhov to elaborate on the Tank 2.0 concept. Pukhov said that traditionally, infantry has protected tanks—particularly in built up urban areas—but given the speed of modern armored vehicles, that is no longer possible in many cases. But while during previous eras tanks were more or less protected against weapons like rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles, the latest generation of those weapons can punch through even the toughest armor.

What should alarm Western planners is that the Russians are rapidly transforming their military into a much more effective one than its larger, cumbersome Soviet predecessor. In both Ukraine and Syria, both air and ground arms have proven to be very effective; the swamp-them-with-numbers approach is clearly a thing of the past.

This wouldn't be a problem, of course, if the Bush-Obama administrations hadn't sought to make them an enemy rather than an ally in the Third Wave of Islamic Expansion.

Heat Street debate: marital rape

My latest debate with Louise Mensch of Heat Street is on the subject of marital rape, concerning which my view that it is an oxymoron has been declared controversial in certain circles:

Louise Mensch: Do you agree that there’s no such thing as rape within marriage?

Vox Day: Yeah, I think it’s quite obvious that it’s not even possible for there to be anything that we describe as rape within marriage. I find it remarkable that someone would try and claim that it is beyond debate when this new concept of marital rape is not only very, very new but is in fact not even applicable to most of the human race. It’s very clear, for example, in India it’s part of the written law that it’s not possible, for even if force is involved, there cannot be rape between a man and a woman. In China the law is the same.

LM: Mm-hmm (affirmative) but there’s a difference between saying what the law is and saying what is morally right. You would agree that just because somebody says something is a law doesn’t make it so. Let’s just start with that basic principle.

Vox: There’s huge difference between morality and legality. I’d be the first to agree with that. The fact of the matter is that the concept of marital rape hangs on consent and because marriage is and has always granted consent, the act of marriage is a granting of consent, therefore it’s not possible for the consent to be withdrawn and then for rape to happen. In fact, the concept of marital rape is created by the cultural Marxists in an attempt to destroy the family and to destroy the institution of marriage.

LM: I’m going to say that that’s patent nonsense. If you consent to something once it doesn’t mean that you’ve given a blanket consent to it forever. We agree on the definition of rape – that rape is when one party forces sex on the other without their consent?

Vox: Yes.

LM: Good. We go that far. Your argument then hinges on the statement that to get married is to give an all-time consent forever to sex with your spouse?

Vox: Exactly. It’s no different than when you join the army. You only have to join the army once. You don’t get the choice to consent to obey orders every single time an order is given. In certain arrangements, and marriage is one of them, the agreement is a lasting one, and that’s why it’s something that should not be entered into lightly.

I find it both amusing and mildly disconcerting that a view which is consistent with the entire legal and philosophical history of the human race is suddenly supposed to be unimaginable. I mean, precisely how ignorant, precisely how brainwashed, does one have to be in order to be completely unable to imagine that which is not only recent history, but is still the law for most of the human race?

Are blacks worse than atomic bombs?

I was drawn to look into this for myself after Snopes tried to dismiss a meme that was going around comparing Hiroshima to Detroit on the basis of some rather spurious grounds, so I thought I'd have a look at the evidence myself.

Now, some have argued that because Detroit's core downtown is still intact, this proves that the decay of the city surrounding it is irrelevant. But a city is more than its downtown, as the comparative population figures demonstrate the same contrast that the pictures do.

Detroit population 
1950: 1.8 million
2016: 680,000

Hiroshima population
1945: 260,000
2015: 1.2 million

Note that this is the most favorable possible comparison for Detroit, as the 1945 Hiroshima population is post-bombing and is based upon the smallest reported casualty count. Moreover, Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013, which was the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in US history.

The claim that the pictures are misleading is a dishonest and knowingly deceitful response. The fact that the downtown still exists merely indicates the destructive process is not yet entirely complete, as that downtown is now "a tiny urban island" in a grass-covered, depopulated sea.

In 1950, Detroit was America's fifth largest city and one of the most prosperous on the back of its booming motor industry. It prompted the construction of skyscrapers on the banks of the river and the development of vast suburban housing projects in the surrounding areas.

But almost 55 years on, a dwindling motor industry and a dramatic fall in blue collar jobs has caused people to leave the Michigan city, abandoning their homes and businesses. These aerial photos reveal the tiny urban island that is left - a clutter of high-rises surrounded by empty housing plots now covered in grass. There are vast areas of open spaces dotted with crumbling industrial buildings and barely-standing Victorian homes until you reach the upmarket suburbs.

The fact that these facts may be uncomfortable or make you feel bad is irrelevant. The evidence is very clear that a black population in excess of an as-yet-undetermined percentage of the overall population renders the continuation of Western civilization impossible. This has been observed everywhere from Capetown to Detroit, and the comparison with Hiroshima only underlines the cultural, economic, and physical devastation that an excessively black population is likely to wreak on a society.

The cuckservative response is that it is Democrat rule, or socialist governing principles, not blacks, who are responsible. This omits two important facts. One, blacks vote for Democrats more solidly than any other group. Two, for most of the post-war years for which I've been able to find the relevant data, Hiroshima has been governed by members of the Japan Social Democratic Party, "a political party that advocates the establishment of a socialist Japan."

What should be done about it? I don't know. But since my people were forcibly put on reservations, I'm not terribly inclined to pay much attention to any appeals to equality or the rhetorical hysterics of dyscivilizationists protesting that nothing can, or should, be done to avert the collapse of civilization throughout the West.

Damage control desperation

Even the UK media is going to almost unprecedented lengths to convince you not to believe the evidence of your lying eyes:

A person who was filmed in a video that has been seized upon by right-wing groups to suggest Hillary Clinton 'had a seizure' on camera has hit back at the outlandish claims. Lisa Lerer, a reporter covering Clinton's campaign for the Associated Press, was on hand for the latest moment conspiracy theorists have latched onto in an attempt to discredit the Democratic nominee.

In the video, which was shot on June 10 at a muffin shop in Washington DC, Lerer was one of the reporters who 'shouted' questions at Clinton about a meeting she had recently had with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. In Lerer's words, Clinton: 'perhaps eager to avoid answering or maybe just taken aback by our volume [she] responded with an exaggerated motion, shaking her head vigorously for a few seconds.'

Right. Look at Lerer's face. That is the face of someone reacting to seeing something go very wrong. Moreover, the suggested excuse doesn't explain why Hillary imitated the involuntary motion, then made an otherwise inexplicable comment about the chai. There are three obvious indicators besides the involuntary movement itself:

1. The horrified reaction of Lerer.
2. The immediate conscious imitation of the movement
3. The comment about the chai, intended to excuse the involuntary movement.

Watch the video. There is no way that is a response with an exaggerated motion. But the media's attempt to cover up Hillary's observable health issues is even more feeble than this.

Hannity also referenced an old picture that was wrongly circulated by right-wing websites recently that showed the Democratic nominee slipping while walking up a flight of stairs. A host of anti-Clinton blogs and websites falsely presented the image as proof the 68-year-old candidate is in poor health.

However, the picture that they claimed to be new, was taken at the top of a staircase in South Carolina on February 24.

Right-wing blog American Mirror started its conspiracy-theorizing post by stating Clinton's health should be 'a major issue of the 2016 campaign'.

It then went on to wrongly say the photograph in question is, 'the latest evidence', to support its conspiracy - despite the picture being almost seven months old. The blog post was then shared by the Drudge Report, a more well-known right-wing website, along with the headline: 'Hillary conquers the stairs'.

What does "wrongly circulated" even mean? It doesn't matter whether the picture was taken in February or taken today, the woman is 68 years old, observably has something wrong with her, is known to have suffered a serious head injury, and can't even walk up the stairs without help.

The more the media attempts to play Narrative Police with regards to Hillary Clinton's health, the more it is obvious that they know there is something serious to hide. Ask yourself this question: why is the global media attempting to run interference for Hillary's health issues when a simple release of her medical records could easily and conclusively address them?

Mailvox: the reluctant revolutionary

From a reader deep in the belly of the Beast:

I am a teacher at a public school in [REDACTED].  During our first professional day this year our faculty was introduced to a new administrative mandate from the state bureaucracy.  At the conclusion of the presentation we were permitted to comment.  I asked the presenter if she thought the educational bureaucracy was insane, evil, or both.  My comment elicited a few chuckles from my colleagues.  She responded that she thought the new procedures would make her a more accountable teacher.  I rejoined that it would make of me a revolutionary.  Once again my colleagues chuckled.  Teachers are some of the worst sheeple on the planet.

I later approached a colleague who is a close ideological ally.  "Well, [REDACTED], which is it?"  As is frequently the case with him, he was quick to hit the mark.  "If they're insane, it makes logical sense to accommodate them.  If they are evil, then we are morally obliged to fight them."  Spot on.  He is good like that.

I tried to suppress my thoughts for the rest of the week, but the realization wouldn't let go.  I had become a reluctant revolutionary.  Or rather, to be more accurate, the state had made me a revolutionary.  The idea sickens me.  I didn't ask for this.  I have never aspired to this sort of vocation or anything like it.  It's one of the last things I would ever wish upon myself.  But here I stand.

The comment you posted this morning from the German president about something being wrong with the people brought to me another sudden realization. Leaders as a class have never studied the antecedents of revolution.  If they had, they would keep on their desks a handy checklist and refer to it often.  But they truly are clueless. Revolutions are not a form of spontaneous combustion.  I am reminded of the final words of Madame Ceausescu as she was put up against the wall:  "You can't do this; I treated you like my children."  Clueless to the bitter end.

Or, as Aristotle put it, some people cannot be convinced by information. Never forget that. They genuinely believe they are our masters. I expect events will eventually convince them otherwise.

A new rule

Apparently this was insufficient warning for some commenters:

14. If you give a moderator reason to believe that you are not interested in honest, straightforward interaction, he will simply spam your comments. Continued attempts to post comments here will be considered harassment and dealt with accordingly. 

So, I'm adding a new Rule 17.

17. Speak for yourself, not for anyone else. If you falsely characterize or inaccurately summarize someone else's statements, arguments, or conclusions, your comments may be deleted and you may be banned. This is particularly true if you attempt to falsely characterize or inaccurately summarize something I have written.

I'm not going to be playing Summary Cop, so don't complain about this sort of thing at every possible opportunity. It's not a weapon for commenters to use against each other, it's intended to shut down a common professional troll tactic. The moderators and I will apply it judiciously, as we see fit.

You can speak your own opinion. You can criticize my opinion and the opinions of the other commenters. But what you are not permitted to do is to try to speak for others in order to set up straw men that you can criticize in lieu of their actual opinions.

And if you're not sure of what someone else is saying, the solution is eminently simple. Just ASK them for clarification. It's not that hard.

You say you want a revolution?

Germany's elite is going to get a well-deserved one soon.

“The elites are not the problem, the people are the problem.”
- German President Joachim Gauck

That may be the dumbest thing anyone has said since Marie Antoinette, and even she wasn't dumb enough to actually say it!

A few thoughts on Worldcon

MidAmericaCon II is approaching, and as one could expect in a world where we're waiting to learn if "Space Raptor Butt Invasion" is a Hugo Award-winning short story, things are getting weird. First, someone had the bright idea of a caption contest. Below is The Alt Right DM's entry.

Add caption

Meanwhile, MidAmericaCon II had a big announcement yesterday, and by the sounds of it, McRapey is VERY excited.

John Scalzi @scalzi
The @HugoAwards will have GENDER FREE BATHROOMS! Can't wait to spend all day in there listening to the sexy ladies going tinkle!"

Unfortunately, Jim "McCreepy" Hines could not be reached for comment, as we are informed that he was already out at Radio Shack purchasing portable recording equipment.

It's a peculiar sort of convention that sees its bathroom policy as a major selling point, whatever that policy might be. But what was either the most amusing thing, or the most tragic thing, depending upon your perspective and how cruel your sense of humor happens to be, was NK Jemisin coming out and admitting that she knows she's nothing more than science fiction's affirmative-action pet. It's a modestly profitable gig, to be sure, but not one that lends itself to much in the way of self-respect.

Throughout the Sad and Rabid Puppies saga, in which some readers protested progressive themes in sci-fi, Jemisin has been an outspoken voice advocating for diversity in science fiction. (Read her musings on "reactionary assholes" in the interview she did with the WIRED Book Club for more on that.) But too often, she has also found herself unwillingly cast in another role: the token non-white writer.

Ever since a report from magazine Fireside Fiction called out a lack of diversity in sci-fi on July 26, Jemisin has received six invitations to contribute to anthologies or magazines—and she's leery of being one of the few go-to names when panicked editors scramble to be more inclusive. And in a tweetstorm this afternoon (below), Jemisin placed the onus on the markets, not aspiring authors, to make writers of color welcome. "The front gates are still shut, see," she wrote. "You're just letting a few more exceptions in the side door." Jemisin may have broken into the world of science fiction, but for other writers to do the same, those gatekeepers need to open those doors wide.

Jemisin didn't break into the world of science fiction. She's the token African-American. She's a diversity totem. She was picked up at a kennel for Peeple of Kolor Who Dont Rite Good, brought home, and is now proudly displayed to anyone who visits or even even happens to walk past outside.

"See, we got DIVERSITY!"

And she's been defecating on the bed and the carpets, and urinating on the legs of the homeowners, ever since.

"After I read that book I realized two things: a) that Heinlein was racist as *fuck*, and b) most of science fiction fandom was too."
- NK Jemisin

The decline of white America

Is the decline of America because America is, by definition, white:

Surveys by the Public Religion Research institute show that nearly 40 percent of Americans say that newcomers from other countries threaten traditional American customs and values. Thirty one percent of white people say that "the idea of America where most people are not white bothers me."

This discomfort with growing diversity is generally most evident among Americans who are older and more conservative. To understand it, it helps to understand where they're coming from. The census data show that roughly half of white Americans lived in a county where 9 out of 10 people were white in 1980. Today, just over a quarter do. Raising our threshold to 98 percent white, as in the maps above, shows that 15 percent of white Americans lived in these near-exclusively white areas in 1980, while less than one percent do today.

Of course, these thresholds are somewhat arbitrary. A county that goes from 98.1 percent white in 1980 to 97.6 percent white in 2010 is not necessarily experiencing a demographic revolution. But the sharp drop in the aggregate number of these nearly all-white counties makes for a useful marker of demographic change.

This 30-year timespan is within living memory for many of the people expressing unease with racial changes. They can look back on a time when literally everyone around them looked like them, and compare it to the present day, where people are becoming more and more different from each other -- at least at the level of skin color.

What is so brutally dishonest about this coverage by the mainstream media is that it completely ignores all the other reasons Americans might not be enthusiastic about seeing their country invaded and their nation destroyed, for one or more of the following reasons:

• Reduced average intelligence
• Fewer jobs
• Lower wages
• Less political representation
• Reduced political influence
• Less community engagement
• Increased pollution and environmental damage
• More expensive housing
• More crowded roads
• Uglier people
• Differing standards of home and yard maintenance
• Increased difficulty in communicating
• More support for government intervention in their lives
• The increased likelihood of war and ethnic cleansing

To boil all that down to racism and a desire to see people who look like you is not merely disingenuous, it is completely dishonest.

Never forget that homogeneous nations come out of heterogeneous empires.

An NCO leaves the US Army

And none too soon, by the looks of things:

I leave the Army for good in September of this year.  My chain of command has been shell shocked that I am going through with it.  Two years ago when I first came to grips with what was happening and resolved to no longer be a part of it, there was derision and even an officer telling me that voicing my opinions about the state of the US economy and its moral failings could be considered a violation of the UCMJ for conduct “prejudicial to good order and discipline.”

When I gave my Operations NCO a copy of the book “A Distant Mirror” by Barbara Tuchman he came to me a month later stating that if there is a civil war, he and his fellow Hispanics will “have to choose sides.”

When I told my first sergeant why I would not be re-enlisting, she said “Don’t you want to re-enlist to get your 20?”

I said that I wanted to re-enlist, but I couldn’t, that my pension was nothing compared to being prepared to sacrifice my life. Then she and I went on to discuss my (your) ideas on why there was a possible collapse of the US government in the future, she went from denying the possibility to stating “Well, it all depends on what level of collapse you’re talking about,”  needless to say I was stunned.

The re-enlistment NCO refuses to talk to me, and several other mid to senior level NCOs who previously thought I was kidding have left the Active reserves for the Individual Ready Reserves.

One stated that he too was disgusted with both candidates for president and then asked me if I thought things would be so bad, why wouldn’t I stay in and try to fix things “from the inside”?  I cited the example of the Yugoslav army and how there were fire fights within units and stated that I would refuse to follow unconstitutional orders.  I then asked, “Don’t you think if one of the two candidates gets in power that either might order the power of the state to be used against their political enemies?  That’s what would be likely to START those kinds of firefights, right?”

If you're not familiar with military culture, NCOs are the mortar that hold the whole thing together. Young officers are eminently replaceable, as new ones can be trained up in a matter of months, but the veteran NCOs that provide them guidance are not.

The fact that the NCOs are leaving is an even more damning indictment of the current US military than women being permitted to serve in combat units or homosexuals and transvestites being allowed to serve at all.

I don't find this chilling, though. I find it a somewhat positive sign. Because I suspect the American people are at least as likely to be designated the enemy by the US government one day as the Russian or Chinese militaries. And the prospects for We the People's will be considerably better if most of those veteran NCOs are on the side of the nation, rather than serving the government against them.

A tale of the Unwithering

Given the number of new readers who may not be familiar with it, I thought its recent Dragon Award nomination for Best Science Fiction novel justified posting this recent Amazon review of John C. Wright's Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm. Congratulations, John, on your Dragon Award finalist!

Just finished rereading Somewhither, a grand tour through John C. Wright's daunting and vivid imagination, wherein dwell creatures eldritch, fell and fantastic beyond anything any one, or even any small number taken together, of earth's many mythologies ever dreamed. Plus all the worlds and trained warriors and assassins and spies and superheroes from a dozen cultures, comics and RPGs kicked up a notch or two by Wright's deft muse, and all tossed into one epic blender of an adventure, of which this is only Part I.

Which is why I needed to read it twice. At least.

Illya Muromets is a odd teenage boy living in rural Oregon with his even odder family. Illya has grown very large and very ugly - heavy brow ridge, huge teeth. He looks nothing like his 2 brothers or his parents. His homeschooling includes rigorous physical and combat training, as well as Latin and Hebrew. He doesn't see this as particularly weird, just sort of odd like everything about his life. His best friend is Foster Hidden, fellow Boy Scout and champion archer.

Dad takes 'business trips' that involve getting armed and armored to the teeth, which arms and armor include any number of holy relics and silver bullets, and and hiking up the hill to the ruins of an old monastery and disappearing for days on end. His mother went on one such trip, and never came back.

Illya gets a job doing grunt work at a nearby 'museum' for the mad and colorful Professor Dreadful, who has an inexplicably beautiful and brave daughter Penelope. Penny Dreadful tries to become the youngest person to sale around the world alone, but her yacht goes down and troubles beset her. She doesn't get the record, but she survives and returns in time for Illya's raging hormones to inflict the world's worst crush on him.

Professor Dreadful gets locked up in the local nuthouse, to the surprise of few. He had been working to decipher a set of what might be cuneiform letters that appeared mysteriously on a wall at CERN after a fatal accident.

Illya gets a desperate message: Professor Dreadful has deciphered the cuneiform, which contained instruction on how to build a gateway between worlds in Ursprache, the one language spoken before the fall of the Tower of Babel.

He has constructed the gateway. He left it running in the museum basement....

Pity the poor Millennials

Literally. Generation X is often hard on the Millennials, and deservedly so. They're soft and whiny and stupidly idealistic, and they're susceptible to buying into the most transparent nonsense. That being said, they face the most difficult economic circumstances of any American generation since the so-called Greatest Generation was born into the Great Depression.

Baby Boomers and Gen Xers still seem to find it hard to believe that basic economic math can explain much of the younger generation’s behavior.

After several news outlets, including The Daily Beast, reported that rates of millennial sexual inactivity in early adulthood are surprisingly high, armchair social theorists came out in force to blame it on everything but the fact that nearly one-third of young adults are still living at home.
One right-wing college news website found a way to attribute the finding to millennials’ desire for “safe spaces.”

Conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat speculated on Twitter that it was an example of the “porn paradox,” whatever that means. Others attributed it, predictably, to the effects of technology or increased anxiety. A Rutgers biological anthropologist even suggested that millennials might be too “motivated” and “ambitious” to even bother with sex.

The most likely explanation—which was mentioned in the study itself—is that parents’ basements do not make great boom boom rooms. But who needs Occam’s razor when you’re publicly opining about the behavior of an entire generation? Lower wages sending 22-year-olds back home after college isn’t nearly as sexy as complaining about porn or political correctness.

The truth is that lower wages and poverty can account for so many of the things that older generations find so mystifying about millennials.

For example, millennials drive less than their parent’s generation—and until recently, at least—were relatively uninterested in buying cars. As The Atlantic reported in 2012, this crisis prompted automakers to appoint “youth emissaries” and come up with new car colors like “techno pink” and “denim.”

But trying to make cars cooler doesn’t change the fact that, as CityLab found, there’s a significant gap in vehicle miles traveled between millenials who make over $30,000 a year and those who make less. Simply put: Cars cost money and millennials have less of it.

Millennials have also been shamed for how much they spend eating out instead of say, saving for retirement. “Millennials Are Spending an Embarrassing Amount on Brunch and Takeaway Pizza,” Vice recently declared.

It’s easy to chalk that generational difference up to some sort of narcissistic short-sightedness but the truth is probably a lot closer to fatalism: When millennials can’t save for retirement anyway, why not spring for some bottomless mimosas instead of enrolling in a 401(k)?

Difficult circumstances don't excuse behaving with all the foresight of a retarded chimpanzee on crack, or dying your hair blue and calling yourself a lady pony, but they do merit some degree of patience and even forbearance on our part. Since their parents, teachers, and professors all maleducated them, they're going to need someone to help set them straight.

Mailvox: an SJW Narrative sale

One of the things I describe in the political philosophy bestseller SJWs Always Lie is the way in which SJWs communicate like advertisers who are trying to sell you something. SJWs don't talk about the world that is, but rather, the world they are trying to convince you it should be. From Chapter 2:

The reason SJWs are so inclined to make false assertions stems from a motivation that is very similar to that of the professional propagandist, which is the need to disregard existing reality in order to bring about the preferred alternative. In the case of the SJW-preferred reality, this nonexistent alternative is known as the Narrative. The Narrative is the story that the SJWs want to tell. It is the fiction they want you to believe; it is the reality that they want to create through the denial of the problematic reality that happens to exist at the moment.

A recent comment from HGL is an almost flawless example of this. Here is his attempt to reshape reality by doing what SJWs always do:

Meh, Wright had some talent befor castalua. I think what's telling is that although vox makes himself out to be the next big thing (constantly), his scifi posts get fewer and fewer hits and everyone ignored the hell out of him on Brad's blog recently. No one who matters is buying it.

Let's count the false assertions. I get five.

1. He implies that John Wright has less talent now than he did 36 months ago. Speaking as an 3x Hugo-nominated editor, who has read and edited the forthcoming Swan Knight's Son, Mr.Wright clearly has no less talent now than he did when he published the Nebula-nominated Orphans of Chaos, or his excellent debut novel, The Golden Age. In my professional opinion, the first Moth & Cobweb novel is better than the Dragon Award finalist Somewhither, and I expect the reviews will demonstrate that accordingly.
2. I do not make myself out to be "the next big thing", much less "constantly". I think it is entirely obvious that Mike Cernovich is the next big thing. I am content to simply continue doing what I do.
3. My SF-related posts do not get fewer and fewer hits. The site traffic has continued to increase; it hit 2.5 million pageviews in July and is on track to exceed 2.7 million this month. The month-to-month growth alone exceeds the total monthly traffic of most SF-related blogs.
4. I'm not sure what the level of interest in a single comment on someone else's blog is supposed to indicate, but the Dragon Award finalist Dave Freer responded directly to my comment there. 
5. There are tens of thousands of people who are buying Castalia books. All of them matter. Regardless, the key thing to note here is the appeal to those "who matter", which is typical SJW-speak, because it permits them to disqualify everyone whose behavior falsifies their false narrative.

The divergence between HGL's Narrative and the objective, observable reality demonstrates why SJWs are so desperately unhappy, and explains why so many of them, like HGL, are mentally unstable and on various mood-altering medications. Reality is simply not what they want it to be, and so they insist on constructing their own delusional form of it, then attempt to sell others on their false Narrative.

After all, if you can convince someone else of it, then it must be true, right? As the Anonymous Conservative puts it, "their whole focus is on establishing a false reality in which everyone else is defective, and they are superior". Here he uses the same technique of example analysis to demonstrate SJW projection at work:

Now, the analysis:

“Could it be perhaps that you are out of sync with the mainstream?”

You will see this throughout his writings. This, to him, is exposing an amygdala bombshell. If you exposed him as “outside the mainstream,” it would elicit reflexive waves of angst, terror, and misery. For him, being on the outside is associated with agony. That is why he put this here. Remember “out-grouping,” in Touching the Raw Amygdala? This is it.

Since deep amygdala pathways are either laid through isolated, but massive and shocking stimuli, or minor, but highly repeated stimuli, and they are best inculcated in childhood instead of maturity, you can usually assume the trigger you see was most likely created repetitively, when the individual was young. Larger stimuli, or stimuli repeated enough in adulthood to burn in these pathways are far more rare, than small stimuli seen often when young.

So here, Sam was conditioned to feel aversive stimulus whenever he let himself be “outside the group.” It speaks to a childhood spent around bullies, and his coping mechanism was to try and disappear into the crowd, which was controlled by the bully. When he was under the bully, in the bully’s group, he felt safety. When the group was focused on someone else, he felt safety. If he were thrown outside the group he felt horror. The amygdala learns from precisely that type of thing. Now, that simple picture – being outside the group – is a trigger.

Once you are in that milieu, it is a small jump to realize that if you can cast someone else out of the group, and expose them to that terror, it would feel good to do it to anyone who bothered you. From there, it is a small jump to being conditioned to feel good about doing it, even to people whom you don’t really care about.

Despite their solipsism and penchant for navel-gazing, SJWs are astonishingly unself-aware. That is why they will blithely hand you the keys to carving up their psyche, not only without hesitation, but under the delusion that they are doing devastating damage to your psychology by doing so.