Essential Listening: The Purity Spiral

The Purity Spiral is a BBC Radio program that covers what readers of this blog will surely recognize: social justice activists' using well-meaning attempts to diversify hobby groups to colonize and destroy said groups. This particular journalist covers controversies in the knitting and young adult literature communities, but we've seen the very same thing occur in gaming, in science fiction literature, and in comics -- all fandoms that are generally liberal in outlook and are thus ripe for the taking.

Towards the end of this program, the question is asked: how do we identify the warning signs of a potential purity spiral? To answer that question, I'd first like to point to my post on Toxic "Diversity;" many important signs are discussed there, including emotional reasoning (as revealed by the rejection of criticism and/or contradictory evidence), bullying and censorship, and the like. To that, I would add that if activists within your particular hobby group can't articulate a clear, achievable end goal, you're definitely looking at the makings of a spiral and should take whatever steps are necessary to stop that shit in its tracks.

IMB, 10/23/19: Fic Continuation & Interesting Link

The story I started last week is now two-thirds complete:

DSM-V: Chapter 1 // Chapter 2 // Chapter 3 // Chapter 4

The rest will be linked in the next installment of IMB. As I suggested last Wednesday, writing MCU fanfiction is just another way for me to process my grief. I just hope I'm entertaining somebody.

I also came across an excellent post today on the MCU that I think deserves to be shared:

Masculinity and the Marvel Movies, Ed Feser

I've always wanted to write up a post on Tony, Steve, their relationship, and how their respective arcs respond to each other, but this gentleman beat me to it -- and probably did a better job than I ever could. Go and read!

Around the Nets

When the United story exploded early this week, I mainly had fun with the memes. Seriously -- the internet really outdid itself this time. Even a Catholic satire site decided to play, which amused me to no end.

But there are serious things to learn from the whole incident, as discussed by the writers below:

How United Happens, by Charlie Martin

Big organizations frequently act like idiots, says Charlie, because their leaders lack on-the-ground knowledge. To me, this seems like an excellent argument for keeping organizations (like - ahem - governments) small and local whenever it's humanly possible.

United Airlines and the Internet Mob, by Amie Gibbons

In this post, meanwhile, Amie summarizes why United was in the wrong here and then goes on to address why the American public responded with one angry voice (a bizarre occurrence indeed). According to her (correct) analysis, our airlines have become so wedded to government support that they have started to behave like government agencies and not like private companies -- and as anyone who's been to the DMV or the VA will no doubt confirm, government agencies either don't care one bit about pleasant customer service or are just too incompetent to provide it due to the reasons discussed by Charlie above.

Whatever the issue may be with United, it seems clear that the industry as a whole needs to get off the government tit, as the subsidies are going to the airlines' heads.

In other news...

Could It Be Time to Deny White Men the Franchise? Huffington Post

Folks in my circles knock the HP all the time for being an SJB-converged fake news site, but honestly, I'm glad it exists. Without it, we would never get to see the sort of insanity that is condoned by much of today's left. Deny white men the franchise? Let's leave aside the fact that this is openly calling for human beings to be denied their rights based on sins that completely different people committed. Like I've said many times before, these ideologues have no clue what it's actually like to be white. While it's true that the European imperialists were often predatory, they did not represent the great mass of white men. They were the people in power. The great mass of white men, in the meantime, continued to struggle to make ends meet -- much as they do today. This collective guilt bullshit is really getting tiresome.

Whedon Warns Trump May Start Killing Gays, Christian Toto

Based on what? Based on the fact that Trump is the first successful GOP candidate to support homosexual marriage? Jesus. I adore much of Whedon's work and think he's a real talent. But he needs to start taking some meds before he completely loses touch with reality -- assuming, of course, that he hasn't already, which we all have good reason to doubt.

Forcing Political Correctness on Employees and Characters Is Killing Marvel Comics,
Jon Del Arroz

Fans of SFF should find this discussion pretty familiar. I happen to agree with other writers that there are multiple factors involved in Marvel's decline - like, for example, the changing nature of the market for comics - but the political uniformity Del Arroz describes is also a big problem that is certainly not limited to one particular company publishing one particular genre of geek literature. If you head on over to Tor's blog, you can see another pretty good illustration of capital-F Fandom's tendency to mistake political agendas for quality in a field completely outside the comics industry. Note: Being "queer" does not make a book good. It doesn't make a book bad either, mind you, but you can't use queerness as a standalone gauge for literary merit. Does the story work? Are the characters people a reader can relate to and care about? Does it address universal human themes that will still resonate ten, twenty, or even a hundred years down the line? If you can't answer those questions, you may want to reassess.  

Links of Interest: Economic Mobility, Unreliable Social Science, and More

How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive, Megan McArdle

None of the findings in this article surprise me. My mother's family is originally from Salt Lake City, and I have some first-hand experience with their "peculiar" society. Yes, the cultural homogeneity does help -- but as McArdle suggests, there are still many things here that are replicable if we could just rediscover our intestinal fortitude and start promoting a generally bourgeois life script.

Psychology's Favorite Tool for Measuring Racism Isn't Up to the Job, Jesse Singal

"A pile of scholarly work, some of it published in top psychology journals and most of it ignored by the media, suggests that the IAT falls far short of the quality-control standards normally expected of psychological instruments. The IAT, this research suggests, is a noisy, unreliable measure that correlates far too weakly with any real-world outcomes to be used to predict individuals’ behavior — even the test’s creators have now admitted as such." This article is pretty technical but still worth a read if you care at all about the problems in social science.

Mortality and Morbidity in the 21st Century, Anne Case & Angus Deaton

This is a preliminary paper discussing an increase in mortality and morbidity in the white working class. Like the widening gaps between men and women when it comes to educational attainment, these are more findings that complicate the regressive left's narrative, which pits the so-called "privileged white male" against everyone else. As it turns out, that "privileged white male" has his own social problems to deal with -- especially if he doesn't have a college degree.

Screeching Harpies Claim Another Scalp, The Liberty Zone

Here, Nicki - in her inimitable style - excoriates feminist Naval Academy alumni for successfully forcing Jim Webb to decline an honor he was supposed to receive because once, back in 1979, he questioned whether women should be allowed to serve in combat. My mother was a member of the "first class" of 1980 and did in fact face resistance from her fellow midshipmen due to attitudes reflected in the essay at issue -- and yet I still find the screaming ridiculous. Even if Webb was utterly wrong and a total sexist at the time - and I'm not convinced that's the case - the fact remains that he eventually changed his mind. Are people just not allowed to be imperfect anymore?

Spare Me the Strong Female Character, Dawn Witzke

This blog post has generated a lot of discussion in my circles, so I think it's worth sharing here. As for my own personal feelings on the matter: SFC's are okay in my book as long as they are still recognizable as women and as people and are not promoted at the expense of strong men. Major Kira Nerys - my girl-crush since middle school - is a good example of an SFC done right. Yes, she does kick a lot of ass -- but she was trained from childhood to be that way and, athletic prowess aside, often succeeds through means other than pure physical strength (like, for instance, being so damned crazy that the enemy declines to call her bluff). Moreover, she's messed up; the consequences of being a child soldier leave her just on this side of being functional, which means she sometimes makes decisions that are frankly irrational and even dangerous. In other words, she's not always right, and she doesn't always win -- and I think that's the real key.

A Few Final Remarks on Hamiltongate

Before I launch into some more discussion of the Hamilton incident last Friday, I'd like to share another fantastic song from the show as a gesture of good faith.


Listen to the respect with which Manuel-Miranda treats Washington. Here, our first president is portrayed, without irony, as a hero who voluntarily steps down from his seat of power, consequently teaching us that America's institutions were crafted to transcend and outlast the fame of any one person. Such a number implicitly rebukes cults of personality and leader worship -- one message among many in this show that are undeniably timely.

The text of Hamilton also does something that I think is vitally important in this age of identity politics: It invites people of very different backgrounds to embrace American heroes, American ideas, and an American identity as their own. Too often, the social justice left discourages its favored groups from finding any inspiration from our history, effectively segregating minority populations from the American heritage entirely. Whether accidentally or no, this only enhances people's sense of "otherness" and existential discomfort. Manuel-Miranda's approach, on the other hand, is much healthier; instead of dismissing Alexander Hamilton and his contemporaries as "dead, white males" whose biographies have nothing to offer to Americans of color, he shows how our Founders' struggles and triumphs are universally edifying.

Which brings me to one reason why the now infamous Friday night curtain call still rankles. To echo Robert Pondiscio's remarks in the New York Daily News, the cast members didn't let Manuel-Miranda's art speak for itself. Or, to put it another way, they assumed that Pence was so incredibly dense - so lacking in any sort of human feeling - that he would fail to grasp the pro-diversity message described above without having it explicitly spelled out in simple words.

Further, the speech wasn't delivered in a vacuum. Context matters. Intonation matters. Truth matters. Several writers and commentators whom I respect greatly have dramatically missed the boat by focusing on the superficial mildness of the words and not on the event in toto. Consider, for example, the audience in attendance: a crowd of overwhelmingly liberal Manhattanites who are already convinced Trump and Pence represent a threat to their rights despite much evidence that flatly contradicts their views. These are people whose smug sense of superiority didn't need to be strengthened or legitimized -- yet Dixon (and presumably the rest of the cast, who allowed Dixon to speak on their behalf) went ahead and flattered these folks anyway. I'm sorry, but to those of us who don't live in that particular milieu, that was gross as hell and needed to be called out.

Consider too where they were. Dixon was not just a private citizen addressing a politician; he was also, essentially, an employee of a business talking to a paying customer. And if you've ever worked customer service, you know you always put your personal opinions aside at the moment of a business transaction. Nobody here is questioning anyone's right to dissent; what many of us do question is the appropriateness of the time and place. Dixon and the other cast members could've invited Pence back stage for a private conversation later; if making their concerns heard was their only motivation, such a conversation would've succeeded brilliantly. But when Dixon tells the audience to film his remarks and spread them far and wide on social media, an additional - and more problematic - motivation becomes strikingly apparent. This wasn't just about exercising one's right to question our incoming executives; this was also one giant virtue signal meant, once again, to congratulate an already unaccountably arrogant group of people on their supposed "right thinking." And quite frankly, we conservatives are sick to death of listening to these Pharisees endlessly trumpet how great they all are when their actions don't justify their pride.

I'm happy that Pence was not offended and responded to the speech with equanimity and grace -- but that does not mean we should set aside this incident's troubling undertones or refrain from critiquing the people involved.

Oh, and by the way: Trump doesn't actually believe in safe spaces -- at least, not in the leftist sense. Haven't you figured out yet that the soon-to-be Cheeto 'n Chief is the ultimate troll?

And with that, I'm going to head out for my Thanksgiving break. I shall return next Wednesday with a post (or two) on the beauty of Constitutional federalism. I hope all of you have a peaceful holiday in the meantime!

In Honor of Constitution Day...

... here's a link to the Constitution itself:

From the National Archives: The Constitution of the United States

Here's a link to the Federalist Papers:

From the US Congress: The Federalist Papers

And just because I'm feeling cheeky, here's a link to some Anti-Federalist arguments:

The Anti-Federalist Papers

Every American citizen should know this history. Unfortunately, many do not -- including prominent politicians who are currently running for office!

Links of Interest: More on Campaign 2016

This morning, one of my students asked me why I thought Trump was popular in the South. "As it turns out," I said, "I've been thinking a lot about that." I don't want to dismiss Trump's voters as simpletons or fascists; no matter how much I may disagree with their political choices, these folks are my neighbors and friends. And as the links below argue, they are trying to tell us something important. God help us if we fail to listen.

*****

Trump: Tribune of Poor White People
Rod Dreher, The American Conservative

I wrote last week about the new nonfiction book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance, the Yale Law School graduate who grew up in the poverty and chaos of an Appalachian clan. The book is an American classic, an extraordinary testimony to the brokenness of the white working class, but also its strengths. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. With the possible exception of Yuval Levin’s The Fractured Republic, for Americans who care about politics and the future of our country, Hillbilly Elegy is the most important book of 2016...

RD: A friend who moved to West Virginia a couple of years ago tells me that she’s never seen poverty and hopelessness like what’s common there. And she says you can drive through the poorest parts of the state, and see nothing but TRUMP signs. Reading “Hillbilly Elegy” tells me why. Explain it to people who haven’t yet read your book.

J.D. VANCE: The simple answer is that these people–my people–are really struggling, and there hasn’t been a single political candidate who speaks to those struggles in a long time. Donald Trump at least tries.

What many don’t understand is how truly desperate these places are, and we’re not talking about small enclaves or a few towns–we’re talking about multiple states where a significant chunk of the white working class struggles to get by. Heroin addiction is rampant. In my medium-sized Ohio county last year, deaths from drug addiction outnumbered deaths from natural causes. The average kid will live in multiple homes over the course of her life, experience a constant cycle of growing close to a “stepdad” only to see him walk out on the family, know multiple drug users personally, maybe live in a foster home for a bit (or at least in the home of an unofficial foster like an aunt or grandparent), watch friends and family get arrested, and on and on. And on top of that is the economic struggle, from the factories shuttering their doors to the Main Streets with nothing but cash-for-gold stores and pawn shops.

The two political parties have offered essentially nothing to these people for a few decades. From the Left, they get some smug condescension, an exasperation that the white working class votes against their economic interests because of social issues, a la Thomas Frank (more on that below). Maybe they get a few handouts, but many don’t want handouts to begin with.

From the Right, they’ve gotten the basic Republican policy platform of tax cuts, free trade, deregulation, and paeans to the noble businessman and economic growth. Whatever the merits of better tax policy and growth (and I believe there are many), the simple fact is that these policies have done little to address a very real social crisis. More importantly, these policies are culturally tone deaf: nobody from southern Ohio wants to hear about the nobility of the factory owner who just fired their brother.

Go and read the whole thing -- and then buy the book. I've just finished reading Hillbilly Elegy myself, and it's a real eye-opener.

*****

How David Brooks Created Donald Trump
Glenn Reynolds, USA Today

When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly. Brooks closes his Trump column with Psalm 73, but a more appropriate verse is Hosea 8:7 "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part. God help us all.

Yep. The members of our clerisy have been kicking the dog for years, and now they have the temerity to be shocked - shocked, I tell you! - that said dog is starting to bite? Screw them, I say. They've done nothing to earn our respect.

Links of Interest: On LGBT+ Activists & Misguided Writing Advice

An Open Letter to Gays and Trans Folk, by Dystopic

This writer's viewpoint is quite close to my own. Though I'm a conservative Catholic (and yes, that means I don't dismiss the Church's teachings on sex and the human person), I also understand that I live in a pluralistic society in which many people do not share my faith or my views. Would I like to seek out compromises that everyone can live with? Absolutely! Unfortunately, there are many who have become so shrill and so uncompromising on these issues that reasonable arrangements are increasingly harder to come by.

I sympathize with this sentiment -- even though it doesn't precisely mirror my own.

Fisking "How to Write Protagonists of Colour When You’re White", by Declan Finn

Declan unloads some serious truth bombs in this piece. Like many on the social justice left, the author of the original article has buried a couple of uncontroversial needles (like, for example, the need for writers to do serious research) within a giant haystack of silly racialist ideology. What, exactly, defines an "accurate, sensitive" portrayal of "people of color"? Nobody's been able to answer that question to my satisfaction for a very simple reason: They can't. People of color are not interchangeable widgets. The African immigrants I teach at work have very little in common with folks who happen to have the same skin color but were born and raised in the US. And once you start talking about science fiction and fantasy, you don't necessarily need to hew to today's realities. It depends on where and when you set your story.

Oh, and yes: white people aren't all the same either. Funny how nobody seems to care about white stereotypes -- nor, come to think of it, does anyone define what it means to "act white in order to be successful." To me, that actually sounds hideously insulting -- to people of color. Success requires the ability to be polite, be responsible, recognize opportunity when it presents itself (even when it does so in an unpleasant guise), work hard, and delay gratification.. You know: the basic bourgeois values. Are you suggesting people of color can't reflect those values without betraying who they are? Are you suggesting that their cultures are fundamentally lacking in these traits -- that these traits are uniquely white? Of course not! Silly me. You are the very model of a modern anti-racist, right?

Right?

The Ideological Lens Is Blinding

And here's a chaser: Your Lying Eyes, by Sarah Hoyt

This Is Just Cool

NASA's Giving Away Brilliant Space Travel Posters For Free

This may come as a shock to you, but we’ve never been to Mars. We’ve never dived beneath the icy crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa, strolled beneath the twin suns of Kepler 16b or watched the acrid clouds of Venus float past. Never skydived under the heavy gravity of the Pictor constellation’s HD 40307 g or sailed across the icy methane seas of Titan. But these retro-style space travel posters from the design studio at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs are fine consolation prizes for the time being.

Indeed they are! I've already downloaded all of them. Now I just need to get access to a high-quality color printer...

A Few Quick Links: Get Them While They're Hot!

Banned by the Publisher, Nick Cole

An author explains how he was railroaded by a mainstream publisher for a "wrong" idea. Could this be why some people are so resentful?

The Beach Book Report, Peter S. Wood, et. al.

Here, the National Association of Scholars takes a look at the summer reading colleges assign to their incoming freshman classes. The recency bias is a huge concern -- as are the evident political biases.

Say Hello to Twitter's Tweet Police, Daniel Payne

The fact that Twitter is talking to a slew of left-wing censorship advocates should be a giant red flag. Those of us with conservative leanings better get cracking on building freer alternatives.

The Flint Water Crisis - Solutions, Not Whining, Jonathan LaForce

This perspective on the situation in Flint, written by a vet with highly relevant experience, is definitely worth a read.

Geeky Links

The Universe is Your Box of Legos
Brad Torgersen

Did you eat spaghetti or General Tso’s this week? How about sushi? Spicy Thai? Have you eaten at a Luau? Ever tried to surf on a surfboard? Do you like jazz music? Hip-hop? Bluegrass? Rockabilly? Do you like Japanese animation? Does your favorite pro basketball team have a Serb or a Frenchman playing — basketball, the sport created by a Canadian, now played in every country?

You see, life is cultural appropriation.

Oh, I know, the stated complaint (from the inventors of literary sin) is that it’s shitty for any writer to play into a stereotype or a trope, especially if it’s derogatory or demeaning — for all definitions of derogatory and demeaning that include, “Makes traditionally Designated Victim people look bad.” Note, it’s perfectly okay to do ham-fisted and derogatory representations of people who aren’t Designated Victims; especially if we’re talking a traditionally Judeo-Christian culture. You will seldom read or hear complaints (from the inventors of literary sin) about artists who make Israelis or American Southern Baptists look bad. In fact, Evangelicals especially are a favorite villain — for many SF/F authors.

So we know that cries of, “Cultural appropriation!” are selective at best, and deliberately, obtusely blind at worst.

Indeed. I get wanting to treat different peoples with respect, and I do think it's important to portray said real-world cultures accurately. The cries of "cultural appropriation," however, are utterly bizarre -- and incredibly counterproductive. The more you yell at folks for their innocent interest in non-Western cultures, the more those folks will back away from portraying those cultures in their writing. Only white characters will be "safe."

*****

But Does It Look Good On The Wall?
Sarah Hoyt

Because the narrative of our day, as prevalent as Christianity in the middle ages, is “Social critique” [...] “to bring about change” and that has become encoded into "show x number of minorities and victims.  Show oppression.  Show flaws in OUR society.  No, not those flaws, bu the ones the elite is obsessed with right now,” that’s what anyone who studied literature has learned to consider “good.”  It distinguishes them from the hoi polloi and they enjoy THAT immensely.  They enjoy tracking down all the markers that mean the literature has been done properly.  And they call the rest of us who don’t look for those markers “stupid.”  Because if we’d bothered to take a literature course and “really think” of things, we’d like what they like.

It never occurs to them that their “art” has become so mannered that it’s virtually indigestible to ANYONE not so concerned with status, or not so pliable as to have swallowed our post grad classes whole (not even with enough garlic.).

And when literature majors try to "change" a popular genre to fit their specifications, they end up violating its deep norms and consequently pissing off significant swaths of that genre's audience. Hence the resentment in my corner of the fandom. We honestly don't care about the color or gender or sexuality of the people writing our science fiction; we do care that so many authors are forgetting to have fun.

*****

And in other news, the 2015 Locus Recommended Reading List is up. I'll leave it up to you to decide for yourselves whether they've covered the field as broadly as did Tangent. I'll say this, though: Some magazines and publishers are conspicuously missing on Locus' list.

Chaser (Added Tuesday): To add to the point Sarah makes in her post above:

Here's why MOST modern art is total crap and why anyone who th...

Here's why MOST modern art is total crap and why anyone who thinks otherwise is a ... by Paul Watson

Posted by Graffiti Kings on Saturday, January 30, 2016

Fortunately, science fiction hasn't really gone this far down the road to perdition. But the destruction of modern art is an important illustration of what happens when the "bold," "innovative," and "transgressive" are honored above all else.

God Bless the Editors of National Review!

"One may say that Trump’s personal life and business dealings are irrelevant to his candidacy, but conservatives have argued for generations that virtue matters, in the citizenry and in the nation’s leaders. Can conservatives really believe that, if elected, Trump would care about protecting the family’s place in society when his own life is—unapologetically—what conservatives used to recognize as decadent?" - Russell Moore

"Trump nevertheless offers a valuable warning for the Republican party. If responsible men irresponsibly ignore an issue as important as immigration, it will be taken up by the reckless. If they cannot explain their Beltway maneuvers — worse, if their maneuvering is indefensible — they will be rejected by their own voters. If they cannot advance a compelling working-class agenda, the legitimate anxieties and discontents of blue-collar voters will be exploited by demagogues. We sympathize with many of the complaints of Trump supporters about the GOP, but that doesn’t make the mogul any less flawed a vessel for them." - The Editors

As you can see, the folks at National Review have gathered an astounding line-up of principled conservative writers who all condemn the Trump candidacy. (Thomas Sowell, you guys! Thomas freakin' Sowell!) And yes: the results deserve to be read in full. Follow the links below for the epic smackdown!

Against Trump (The Main Editorial)

Conservatives Against Trump (The Symposium)

Chaser (Added Sunday): Remedium peius morbo

Another Important Link (This Time on Education)

One Day in the Life of an Urban Teacher
Dana R. Casey, The Federalist

Why do we have so much trouble educating urban children and teens? As Casey makes clear, a pervasive lack of discipline is a huge factor. Many students are routinely absent -- and when they do show up to class, they flat out don't listen when their teachers tell them to put their phones away, stop talking, and get to work. The problem, in other words, is the culture -- and that's something fancy new curricula simply can't fix. Go and read the whole thing!

Posts of the Week: Campaign 2016 Updates

This afternoon, while I was trying to sleep off my current bout of sinusitis, I had the weirdest dream -- that Donald Trump was president and I was chosen to be one of his advisers.

Aaaahhh!!!!
I'm a movement conservative - specifically, one with "reformicon" leanings - and like most movement conservatives, I think Trump would be a disastrous candidate for the GOP. He's sound and fury signifying nothing -- a populist rabble-rouser whose policy prescriptions are literally absurd and whose campaign events often rival Obama's 2008 campaign when it comes to sheer creepiness.


Seriously: What the hell is this?
But it would be beyond foolish for those of us who actually care about the future of conservatism to ignore the few things Trump gets very right. That's why the following two posts are today's "posts of the week":

First, go and read Notes on a Phenomenon, in which Mark Steyn describes a Trump event held on Bernie's turf in Vermont. Apparently, Trump doesn't use a teleprompter and doesn't recycle the same boring, focus-group-tested stump speech. Instead, he says whatever pops into his head at any particular moment.

"One minute he's talking about the Iran deal, the next he detours into how Macy's stock is in the toilet since they dumped Trump ties. But in a strange way it all hangs together: It's both a political speech, and a simultaneous running commentary on his own campaign." 

This explains why Trump often sounds like a crazed nutbar -- but in this media-saturated, celebrity-focused culture, it also works. Writes Steyn:

"I've seen no end of really mediocre shows at the Flynn in the last quarter-century, and I would have to account this the best night's entertainment I've had there with the exception of the great jazz singer Dianne Reeves a few years back. He's way funnier than half the stand-up acts I've seen at the Juste pour rires comedy festival a couple of hours north in Montreal. And I can guarantee that he was funnier than any of the guys trying their hand at Trump Improv night at the Vermont Comedy Club a couple of blocks away. He has a natural comic timing." 

This, of course, does not mean Trump is qualified to occupy the nation's highest office. It does, however, reveal a queer sort of authenticity that more serious candidates should try to adapt to their own needs -- without the lunatic demands for mass deportations and a border wall. First suggestion? Get rid of the damned consultants and actually listen to the people!

Meanwhile, TRUTH, a blog post written by the inimitable Sarah Hoyt, hits upon something else that drives Trump's allure. The money quote:

"Maybe Trump will turn out (somehow) to be a pragmatic ruler, but make no mistake, he will be a RULER, not a leader, because he has no concept of limits or of individual rights.  His concept is of socialism, only more national.  But people here are so tired of being told that the United States is the worst thing ever, when they see it isn’t, that they are willing to accept even an outright socialist, if he’ll just assure them they’re not going crazy and they’re not evil for loving their country." 

Yep. As Sarah observes elsewhere in the same post, the West's cultural aristoi have been pissing down our backs and telling us it's raining for quite some time, and it is totally and utterly sane to hate them for it and to look for someone - anyone - who's willing to tell the truth about who we are as a civilization and, more importantly, defend us from peoples and ideologies that wish us ill. If no one of intellectual heft takes the stage to fill this role? Trump is mild compared to the threats waiting in the wings. If we keep stomping on every sincere doubt regarding immigration and our national security, we will get our own Front National -- and it won't be pretty.

To the GOP: Wake up and pay attention! Your survival may depend on it.

Some Odds & Ends

Happy New Year! I'm back!

Despite some issues with my health that lingered over Christmas vacation, I was still able to watch the new Star Wars movie (which was definitely derivative but not too bad), take in a show at the Kennedy Center (Matilda, which was just as adorable as I suspected it would be), and (most importantly of all) spend time with my brother and sister-in-law. Hopefully, your holiday season was also joyful and stress-free.

It's going to take me a bit to get re-adjusted to "business as usual." In the meantime, I'm going to drop off a few interesting things I encountered over the break:

Thing the First: On the New Radical Subjectivity of Identity

The Crisis of Character:
Identity Politics and the Death of the Individual
by Brendan O'Neill

Politics is no longer the sphere in which interests are expressed and convictions crash, but rather has become an arena for the pitting of personalised identities against one another: a new caste system, in effect. The individual with conviction has given way to the insecure possessor of an identity, whose primary concern is with the protection of his or her identity from ridicule or assault. We enter the public sphere as self-ossified categories rather than as thinking, convinced persons; as ciphers, representing something, rather than characters, containing something.

But the truly notable thing about today is not so much the obsession with identity – it’s the instability of identity. Humans have been hunting for identity for centuries. The instinct to define ourselves, to project ourselves into the world, is strong. And there’s nothing wrong with it. What’s new today is that identity has become an incredibly subjective phenomenon. ‘I identify as…’ Where once an individual’s identity was informed, or shaped, by experience and belief, through an engagement in the public sphere or with a party or association, today identities are self-consciously and often defensively constructed.

This exemplifies the sort of analytical writing I enjoy: the kind that pulls back, takes in our culture as a whole, and tries to unify seemingly disparate threads. Definitely read the whole thing; I think O'Neill's insights are right on point.

Thing the Second: Never Forget the USSR Was Awful


This is why I'm an unrepentant capitalist.
Thing the Third: On Conservative Environmentalism

Dan Dagget
Conservative Environmentalist: Eco-Radical No More

From his "About" description:

I’m an environmentalist, and I’m a conservative. I didn’t start out that way; in fact I started out as an environmental activist, a fairly radical one. I was involved in some of the earliest actions of Earth First, was designated one of the top 100 grass roots activists by the Sierra Club, and helped put together ad hoc groups in Ohio and Arizona directed at specific issues—controlling coal surface mining in Ohio and protecting mountain lions in Arizona. I changed my “environmental politics” because I came to believe that mainstream environmentalists—the great majority of whom are liberals—are more interested in expanding the role of government than in fixing what’s wrong with the environment. Or in sustaining or enhancing what’s right.

I still intend to describe what, to me, would constitute sensible public policy in re: the environment, climate change, and conservation, but while you wait, you should peruse the above-linked blog. This gentleman has some very interesting - and important - things to say about land management in the West.

Lastly, for the Geeks:

The Tangent Online 2015 Recommended Reading List

Dave Truesdale and his co-authors do a great job covering the short fiction market for sci-fi and fantasy. As we come upon another awards season, I highly recommend their long list as a possible nominations resource. And by the way, everything Dave writes in the attached note regarding Sad Puppies 4 is absolutely true. Our recommendation pages are open to everyone, so go and make your voice heard!

Miscellany

Okay -- I know I'm being lazy this week, but there's a holiday coming up. Forgive me while I drop a few random links in this space.

First, this was brought to my attention because it is my alma mater: 

College of William & Mary Students Want Statue of Thomas Jefferson Removed

Students at the College of William & Mary want Thomas Jefferson’s status removed from campus because they call him an "incestuous rapist" and a "racist."

The Jefferson statue there is now covered in yellow notes that say things including: "he knew it was wrong," "racist" "rapist," "black lives matter," and "stop worshiping racists."

Sigh. I know what you're probably thinking, but William & Mary is not like other schools that have made the news and is unlikely to be overrun by censorious, fascist thugs. Its speech policies are green-lit by FIRE, and as far as I can determine, any discussions of race relations that have taken place on campus have been entirely sane and peaceful.

Of course, that doesn't mean I approve of the ideas behind the defacement of the Jefferson statue. This sudden enthusiasm to erase history is deeply misguided -- and creepy besides. I'm well aware that our third president was, at best, a hypocrite when it came to slavery, but - as has often been observed - the past is a foreign country. In Jefferson's time, many intellects were darkened by the sin of racism. Are we going to expunge everyone who was wrong on this issue? Is there no room for understanding that people are fallen creatures and will often hold a mixture of both good and evil beliefs?

Thankfully, there are students at Princeton who are asking the same questions:

Princeton Student Group Stands Up to Campus Protesters

Academic discourse consists of reasoned arguments. We simply wish to present our own reasoned arguments and engage you and other senior administrators in dialogue. We will not occupy your office, and, though we respectfully request a minimum of an hour of your time, we will only stay for as long as you wish. We will conduct ourselves in the civil manner that it is our hope to maintain and reinforce as the norm at Princeton. 

This dialogue is necessary because many students have shared with us that they are afraid to state publicly their opinions on recent events for fear of being vilified, slandered, and subjected to hatred, either by fellow students or faculty...

We oppose efforts to purge (and literally paint over) recognitions of Woodrow Wilson’s achievements, including Wilson College, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and his mural in Wilcox Dining Hall. As you have noted, Wilson, like all other historical figures, has a mixed legacy. It is not for his contemptible racism, but for his contributions as president of both Princeton and the United States that we honor Wilson. Moreover, if we cease honoring flawed individuals, there will be no names adorning our buildings, no statues decorating our courtyards, and no biographies capable of inspiring future generations.

Good for them. I hope their administration hears them out.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Haidt - who is one of my favorite liberal academics right now - has written another article that is worth reading in full:

The Yale Problem Begins in High School

You might think that this is some sort of justice — white males have enjoyed positions of privilege for centuries, and now they are getting a taste of their own medicine. But these are children. And remember that most students who are in a victim group for one topic are in the “oppressor” group for another. So everyone is on eggshells sometimes; all students at Centerville High learn to engage with books, ideas, and people using the twin habits of defensive self-censorship and vindictive protectiveness.

And then… they go off to college and learn new ways to gain status by expressing collective anger at those who disagree. They curse professors and spit on visiting speakers at Yale. They shut down newspapers at Wesleyan. They torment a dean who was trying to help them at Claremont McKenna. They threaten and torment fellow students at Dartmouth. And in all cases, they demand that adults in power DO SOMETHING to punish those whose words and views offend them. Their high schools have thoroughly socialized them into what sociologists call victimhood culture, which weakens students by turning them into “moral dependents” who cannot deal with problems on their own. They must get adult authorities to validate their victim status.

So they issue ultimatums to college presidents, and, as we saw at Yale, the college presidents meet their deadlines, give them much of what they demanded, commit their schools to an ever tighter embrace of victimhood culture, and say nothing to criticize the bullying, threats, and intimidation tactics that have created a culture of intense fear for anyone who might even consider questioning the prevailing moral matrix.

Indeed. By the way, the other posts at Heterodox Academy are also top notch. Consider adding that website to your regular reading list.

Now for something completely different:

I Will Not Apologize for Making a Joke About Star Wars

More than a month ago, I made some jokes about Star Wars on Red Eye, a satirical political comedy show that airs at 3 a.m., and it has resulted in me being verbally abused and told to die by a mob of enraged fans for the past four days now.

Wow. Seriously? These internet trolls need to get a life. They do not represent me or my geek friends at all.

And finally, something beautiful:

I agree with my brother. I could watch this all day.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Regular posts will resume next week.

What Is Love?

This post is going to be a hodgepodge. I'm trying to pull in some disparate threads I've picked up in the past week, so forgive me for thinking out loud.

First thread: I'm not only a secular teacher with special interests in STEM education and test preparation. I'm also a volunteer catechist at my local Catholic church, where I - hopefully successfully - instruct young teens and confirmandi in the fundamentals of our Faith. Last Sunday, the topic was Jesus Christ: who is He, and how can we develop a closer relationship with Him? The first segment in the curriculum encouraged the kids to share what they imagined when they thought of Jesus, and this is pretty much the response I received:

This is a very un-Catholic thing to say, but doesn't He seem like kind of a pussy?

The stiff-necked contrarian in me was deeply unsatisfied. Certainly, Jesus is merciful, forgiving, and approachable for children and sinners alike. But I couldn't help thinking of that Facebook meme. You know -- the one that references Matthew 21:12?

Gives you a slightly different impression, doesn't it?

And what about C.S. Lewis' descriptions of Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia?

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

***** 

“He'll be coming and going" he had said. "One day you'll see him and another you won't. He doesn't like being tied down--and of course he has other countries to attend to. It's quite all right. He'll often drop in. Only you mustn't press him. He's wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

So I pulled out the Bible and tried to steer my charges in a slightly different direction. I reminded them that Jesus' forgiveness was always followed by a command to sin no more. I noted the ways in which Jesus called out the powers of his day -- and was ultimately put to death for it. And overall, I tried to paint a more virile picture of who Jesus was.

Driving home, though, I was still disturbed. Damn it: Our culture has domesticated Christ.

Second thread: Apparently, according to the scrupulously "correct," we can no longer call criminals what they are. The word "criminal," you see, "dehumanizes" people who've simply been "rendered desperate by the cruelties of capitalism."

That sound you just heard was my eyes rolling out of my skull and bouncing on the floor. I'll be typing this post by feel from now on.

But seriously: Why are we suddenly so concerned about the precious feelings of petty thieves and thugs -- and why are we so unconcerned about the feelings of their victims? I'm a Christian and do believe in the possibility of redemption even for the very worst malefactors, but as Sarah Hoyt has noted, crime victims are also human beings and also deserve our consideration:

Say, for instance, you feel sorry for a pedophile – not that any of them got involved in anything like that recently! – because after all the poor critter is confused, and didn’t choose to be this way. You let him/her go, or even encourage him/her with stuff like “it’s not your fault.”

What is going to happen? I can tell you. What is going to happen is that they’re going to hurt another or many kids.

Now the kids didn’t ask to be hurt, and they didn’t do anything to deserve it.

By encouraging/feeling sorry for one person, who can, after all, control him/herself or seek help in doing such, you were cruel to a vast number of innocents that didn’t do anything to bring this on them.

This reality should be self-evident to anyone -- particularly to people who've been preyed upon. So why this drive to discourage telling the damned truth?

Third thread: Go and read the following post, also by Sarah Hoyt:

Holding Women Back

Sarah wrote this in response to the silly claims zipping around fandom that we Sad Puppies are seeking to suppress women writers, but one passage in particular struck me as more generally applicable:

Making special prizes for good little girls because vagina and actually going so far as to argue that creations like games or books which are engaged in as ludic pursuits don’t need to be fun, but only relevant, and that you should enjoy them even if you don’t enjoy them because they’re created by women, does the reverse of what I (and a lot of others, I was not a paragon.  I’m using my experience because I lived it) did when I had the best grades and won contests DESPITE the inherent prejudice against me.  I and others like me proved women can be grown ups and can function in the adult world; these victimhood pony-riders are convincing people who by an large believe in female equality to reconsider and think that women are fragile, not so smart creatures who need easy steps and easier tests and accommodations to function.

Here, Sarah is approaching, asymptotically, what we who know a little something about education and human psychology have discovered: We are not designed to live in a friction-free universe. We require some adversity to become fully-actualized.

I'm not suggesting, of course, that we deliberately and needlessly hurt people to "toughen them up." I am suggesting, however, that I would be a failure as a teacher if I did not set the bar just a little bit higher than my students' grasp and then inspire them to jump. That's why I love Hajimete no Otsukai -- or this video, also from Japan:


High expectations beget excellence. Criticism begets improvement. What would happen to my students if I never deconstructed the weaknesses in their persuasive essays? What if I never pointed out their grammatical mistakes -- or told them their math was wrong? What if I never imposed discipline? I would inflict illiterate, innumerate brats upon the world.

This new regime of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and trophies for victimhood flies against our very nature, and it is already making lousy writers and lousy thinkers. As a writer, you must be able to accurately and sympathetically depict a full range of human personalities -- but you will not learn how to do so if you spend your entire lives avoiding people who think differently. As a supposed activist for "justice," you must understand, deeply, the potential obstacles that stand in your way, and you must know how to respond to the people who might oppose you -- skills you will not learn if your college campus is cleansed of all that is potentially disturbing to your beliefs. I know I'm a better debater because my father consistently served as my devil's advocate. Why are millennial SJW's and their older enablers so eager to deny their compatriots the same intellectual experience? A critique is not an assault. Challenge is not violence. When you assert the opposite, you foster mediocrity. You make the objects of your supposed "compassion" look somehow inferior.

Now let's try to create the tapestry: The common theme that breathes through all of this, I think, is our society's disordered definition of love. As a catechist, I repeatedly emphasize that love is wanting what is best for another person and seeking, self-sacrificially, to accomplish it. Our popular culture, however, has tamed this concept the same way it has tamed the radical, masculine Christ. Love, alas, is now simply niceness. If you love someone, says the zeitgeist, you must never cause him or her to feel shame, sorrow, frustration, or even cognitive dissonance. To elevate a man, you must wrap him in swaddling wool.

Said zeitgeist is wrong - morally and scientifically - and it should be challenged at every opportunity.

Another Link of Interest: Fisking Wired

The hit pieces never stop. This time, a writer at Wired has jumped on the Puppy Kicker bandwagon and dutifully repeated the SFF establishment's distortions and outright lies. Fortunately, "Dystopic" has already fisked this nonsense so we don't have to:

Pop Culture Has No Soul: Deconstructing the Puppy Kickers

A few of my favorite quotes:

Amy explains that “activists” were angry because characters were gay, or women, or aliens. What kind of nonsense is this? I am a participant in a number of forums and locales on the Internet where Sad and Rabid Puppies discuss authors, characters and books. Many of them (probably the majority) are fans of David Weber, whose penultimate Honor Harrington series is centered around a woman. His Safehold series features a transgender (a woman who became a man) as Merlin, arguably the most important character of the series. The Raj Whitehall series by S.M. Stirling and David Drake features two gay protagonists in the service of the titular Raj Whitehall. Sarah Hoyt (a female author and Sad Puppy, by the way) has a major gay character in her Darkship series.

And in Torgersen's The Chaplain's War, the lead female is a North African Copt. As I remarked in my short post on Baen, the books we Pups like are lousy with "diverse" characters and strong women. Unfortunately, said characters don't fit the narrow political "types" these SJW's seek. Instead, they are flesh-and-blood individuals -- and competent ones at that.

Moving on:

What we insist is that diversity is irrelevant. It’s the story that matters. If you want to tell your story with a bunch of Norwegian Men who are whiter than a polar bear in a snowstorm, go ahead. If you want to have a cast of Gay Jewish Black Transgender Lesbians, nobody is stopping you. Write your story, and make it good.

Actually, there is a sort of diversity that actually does matter: diversity of thought. This, however, is something the radical fannish left is busily trying to squelch.

And speaking of the left's power:

Tor is run by Leftists like PNH and Irene Gallo. The media is sympathetic to your point of view. When a Black man is killed by a White cop, everybody notices. When the reverse happens (and it HAS happened), nobody even bats an eyelash. It’s #BlackLivesMatter not #StopPoliceBrutality or something else neutral. It is about how many gay authors get nominated, or how many Black authors get nominated, not whether or not any of the works are good. 

White men are more likely to get published? By who? Amy, your side controls all SciFi publishers except Baen and Castalia. Indeed, it’s Indie publishing and Amazon that aspiring White male authors like myself often have to go to, because we all know that PNH would chuck our work into the garbage can the second he picked up a whiff of non-Progressive thought in it. 

You keep thinking that we are “The Man.” Here’s a newsflash for you, Amy: YOU ARE “THE MAN.” 

DC Comics bows to your wishes. Hollywood is famous for being Left-leaning. Even Politico acknowledges that the media is 95% Liberal. Your side has all the power. We don’t have privilege, and we haven’t for decades. 

You call us the oppressors. You project your own actions onto us.

OORAH. This is telling it like it is. Privilege is multivariate -- and in the world of fandom, it is not we Pups who possess it.

At any rate, there's plenty more at the link. Go and read. Meanwhile, I will start working on an essay for next week explaining why N.K. Jemison's definition of science fiction as "the literature of the present, viewing the future as allegory" is, at best, only twenty percent correct. Boy, do I have a lot to say on that one! 

Links of Interest: Cultural Appropriation, the Tao, and Math Education Myths

I'm going to be busy with this particular book today, so please enjoy the links I share below!

All Cultures Are Mine, David Marcus, The Federalist

"Nobody gets upset when Yo-Yo Ma plays the hell out of Bach. Nobody asks him to pay homage or royalties to white culture. As a result, white culture is open to everyone. It is the cultural lingua franca that binds together Americans’ understanding of the world.

The proponents of privilege theory and the concept of cultural appropriation seek to decentralize whiteness but, ironically, they are doing precisely the opposite. They are guaranteeing the central role that white culture plays by insisting it is the only culture that belongs to all of us. The price of this proprietary power play is steep. It encourages division and denies all of us the full flower of our shared human cultural history."

I couldn't agree more. Why are SJW's so eager to bring back racial segregation?

Life, Carbon, and the Tao, Tom Simon, Superversive SF

"In effect, the ruling classes of Westeros, and many others like them in recent fantasy, are crime syndicates in a world without law. But it is the law that makes the crime possible. The vast majority of the people need the Tao to do business with one another, and to make the whole society function. Part of that function is enforcing the Tao through laws, and resolving disputes between people when reciprocity breaks down. This is not a function that we ever see the epic gangsters performing. They are too busy planning murders and rebellions. Real criminal gangs are only able to function because someone else does the hard work of holding society together. They never exist as a ruling class; and when they do temporarily become rulers, as with the Barbary pirates of the eighteenth century, or the Somali warlords of our own time, the society breaks down, the people perish, and the profits of crime disappear. Without the Tao, there is no trust between people; without trust, nobody can work and create wealth; and without wealth, there is nobody for the criminals to rob."

A powerful critique of grimdark fantasy. As Glenn Reynolds might say, read the whole thing.

The Myth of "I'm Bad at Math", Miles Kimball & Noah Smith, The Atlantic

"Is math ability genetic? Sure, to some degree. Terence Tao, UCLA’s famous virtuoso mathematician, publishes dozens of papers in top journals every year, and is sought out by researchers around the world to help with the hardest parts of their theories. Essentially none of us could ever be as good at math as Terence Tao, no matter how hard we tried or how well we were taught. But here’s the thing: We don’t have to! For high-school math, inborn talent is much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence."

Yes: Average students can learn algebra. It does require a firm foundation in arithmetic that many of my students do not possess, but the correct response to this difficulty is to fix the gaps in their elementary education -- not to remove algebra from the high school curriculum entirely.