Hugo Awards Meltdown A Case Study In Cultural Guerrilla Warfare

People who want to make real, meaningful change for society can no longer do so through mainstream institutions or practices, which are hopelessly compromised. The barbarians are inside the gates and have commandeered the towers and battlements constructed by their betters, leaving guerrilla and "asymmetric" strategies as the only real method of resistance.

A good example of this was provided recently by Theodore Beale (a.k.a. Vox Day), who threw a monkey wrench into the Hugo Awards that are designed to recognize excellent works of science fiction. Vox is often referred to as "the most hated man in science fiction," mainly because he has declared war on the leftist social justice warriors (SJWs) who have infiltrated and corrupted that genre. The SJWs have fallen into the habit of awarding Hugos not on the basis of literary merit, but rather politics, demographics, or simple favoritism. Enduring works of science fiction by the likes of Asimov, Heinlein, and Bradbury have given way to subliterate space porn. After witnessing trashy romances and politically-correct screeds get nominated year after year, and after having been illegally purged from the Science Fiction Writers Association for committing thoughtcrime, Vox did something about it. He launched his "Rabid Puppies" campaign to encourage anyone and everyone to become a member of the World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) and vote for his own recommended slate of novelists. Vox's effort mirrored those of other authors who supported the parallel "Sad Puppies" campaign, which likewise sought to prevent the SJWs from handpicking the Hugo winners.

It worked and has caused some measure of consternation. I find this uplifting even though I'm not much of a science fiction fan. Science fiction often strikes me as banal escapism for people with low self-esteem, but the ideal of great science fiction -- which hews closely to scientific principles and applies them in new and imaginative ways -- is worth preserving from the grubby hands of the barbarians who already have torn down so many idols in their wake.

The lesson here is that those of us who adhere to principles and ideals must sometimes hold our noses and adopt less-than-ideal methods to protect them. This is because the enemy has no principles whatsoever and is fighting with the gloves off. So should we. Principles and ideals are the currency between civilized people, not between the civilized and savages.

A Study In Contrasts

The Colorado Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.) has posted a profanity-laced rant by an officer who proclaims that "all lives don't matter" and that we proles should be thankful that he exists to protect us.

So, this is what passes for respectable, mainstream discourse today. At the same time, the sentiments that I cogently and civilly express on this blog are surely regarded as crazy, radical, oppressive, or even dangerous. The world is an open-air asylum after all. 

Hurray For Ireland

Ireland has exercised its sovereign right to endorse gay marriage. If that's what the citizens of the Emerald Isle truly want, then bully for them. To deny Ireland this sovereign right would be every bit as unjust as denying, for example, California of its sovereign right NOT to endorse gay marriage. Yet this is precisely what has happened by virtue of a federal kritarchy that has done violence to the Constitution and decreed that citizens must endorse gay marriage against their will. In short order the Supreme Court will likely complete this betrayal and decree that sovereignty and democracy are permitted only so far as they comport with elite opinion (meaning that there is no sovereignty or democracy).

Once again, I fail to see how any moral, rational, or sane person can believe that it's better to force the public to endorse gay marriage than merely to allow gays to do whatever they want with no participation or interference by the public. Somehow, the latter scenario is deemed oppressive while the former is hailed as tolerant and liberating. I'm embarrassed by my contemporaries. 

Soldiering Isn't What It Used To Be

Fred Reed skewers the Army for making men wear high heels in a sensitivity-training session worthy of a Stalinist HR department in corporate America. In an open letter to the Chief of Staff, Fred makes some humorous points:

I do not question your qualifications for command. You doubtless have a firm handshake, a steely gaze, an imposing presence, and a perfect grasp of PowerPoint. But a general who is so afraid of feminists that he forces his troops to play dress-up, well, I mean, what if there is a real war?

I applaud your forthrightness in bringing the doughboys out of the closet in those cute red heels. They are so precious! (By the way, have you considered foot-binding?) As a former Marine in Vietnamese days, I have always suspected the Army of being cross-dressers. How candid of you to confirm my suspicions.

True, traditionalists, and warriors, and cranky old Marines will say that you are just another sorry two-bit, peace-time, careerist politician of a pseudo-soldier who doesn’t have the balls to stand up to feminists and protect the service from becoming a display ad for Victoria’s Secret. I am shocked. How could they think such a thing?

Yes, Generral, yes. I understand. Putting GIs in those darling heels is supposed to provide some kind of uplift (though I believe brassieres are better for that). But I know perfectly well, and you may suspect—check with your dominatrix—that feminists get a hoot out of watching those macho men (ugh!) tottering around before the whole world in heels, like teen-age girls preparing for their first prom. "Heeeeeeeeeeeee-ha-ha." Likely every diesel-dyke in a Women’s Studies department is rolling on the floor. Tippy-toe. Tippy-tippy-toe. "Hey, Sheila, look what we made them do!"

Where I disagree with Fred is his obvious outrage over the program and the broader dysfunction infecting the military. I say amplify the decades-long trend of lowering standards, accepting anyone who can fog a mirror, making everyone more sensitive to each other's feelings, and altering the military's focus from warfare to careerism. Such a military will be far less capable of invading distant countries that have not attacked us, let alone of turning its weapons on American citizens who increasingly resent being governed by a band of outlaws.

2015 Kentucky Derby A Monument To Illiteracy

Sloppy language is a reflection of sloppy thought, and the caliber of language today confirms that Idiocracy already has arrived. It's becoming impossible to read the news, watch advertisements, or share correspondence without having to cross a minefield of misspellings, run-on sentences, needless apostrophes, subject-verb disagreements, pronoun-antecedent mismatches, and just utter incoherence. Recently, though, this illiteracy reached new depths.

I was reading a news story about a talented horse competing in this year's Kentucky Derby, and the story named the horse as "American Pharoah." My first reaction was to consider the publication a rag in need of a new copy editor. After all, the proper spelling for the rulers of ancient Egypt is "Pharaoh," a word made all the more famous by its association with the story of Exodus. Upon checking other publications, though, I learned that the misspelling truly is the horse's name because all of the adults who contributed to coming up with the name were too ignorant to know it was wrong.

This display of illiteracy matches Honey, I Shrunk The Kids for its sheer prominence and brazenness. I wish someone would make a "time masheen" and take me back about 100 to 150 years.

Mad Max Controversy Showcases The Awesome Power of WHAMs

Not long ago I posted on how WHAMs (white heterosexual able-bodied males) have the superhuman ability to strike fear in everyone else's hearts with a mere utterance. On that occasion it was a song on a bus that petrified the nation. Now there is a fresh WHAM controversy riling the nation, and it concerns criticism of a film.

The film in question is the re-boot of the Mad Max series from the late '70s and early '80s, which is near and dear to any red-blooded male who grew up in that area. It seems the reboot (Mad Max: Fury Road) is a feminist Trojan horse that portrays the lithe Charlize Theron barking orders and kicking males' behinds. This doesn't surprise me one bit; practically every film these days is drenched with feminism and various other perversions characteristic of spoiled, decadent societies. What has surprised me, at least a little bit, is the hysterical reaction to the blog (Return of Kings) for criticizing the film and calling for men to boycott it. Apparently, the mainstream media targeted the blog post for censure and thereby caught the attention of the masses. I found out about the whole affair when a mangina condemned the blog post on my Facebook news feed. Even the mainstream temple of Time magazine identified the film as feminist, yet the blog post is hated merely for complaining about this fact. 

This is fascinating for a couple of reasons. For one, the mainstream media have decided that they cannot simply ignore the manosphere/androsphere, but rather must attack it (which is the third step toward victory). For another, it reveals new depths to the hypersensitivity and insecurity of non-WHAMs, for not even having the megaton star power and money of Hollywood on their side makes them feel safe from WHAM criticism, even from an otherwise obscure blog. Once again, this calls out for explanation, and the only one I can come up with is this: they know in their deepest recesses that WHAMs are the ones who built this society and are necessary to maintain it. Atlas is not supposed to shrug; he is supposed to keep holding up the vault of the heavens while everyone else keeps nipping at his heels. But he is starting shrug, just a little bit, and they are scared to death.

I Am Not A "Conspiracy Theorist"

Certain phrases are uttered, like incantations, to ward off persons and ideas that threaten to roust the majority from its unreflective slumber. One such phrase is "conspiracy theorist," which refers to a person who believes that major events such as the JFK assassination, the moon landings, the Oklahoma City bombing, and 9/11 were inside jobs or hoaxes that contradict the official narrative. As someone with an open mind, I'm willing to listen to anyone's arguments on these or other subjects rather than reject them out of hand. Debate doesn't frighten me, as I'm confident in my ability to reason and to separate fact from fiction. Most people, however, are deathly insecure and have long since abandoned the habit of thinking, preferring to have "experts," bosses, bureaucrats, and politicians do it for them.

Theorizing about "what really happened" has never been the purpose of my blog or any other writing I've done. I read the same news everyone else does and have no pipeline to esoteric information beyond the reach of the general public. All I do is apply critical thought and historical frames of reference to what is right in front of everyone's eyes. For example, and as any regular reader of this blog knows, I submit there are several astonishing and disturbing things about modern life that are in plain view and require no conspiracy theories to observe:

• The federal government operates outside the Constitution with regard to taxing, spending, immigration, domestic regulation, criminal law, foreign affairs, war, spying, and a host of other issues. This is acknowledged by even the most elite judges and law professors, who view it as a good thing.  

• The United States was founded as an independent republic but now operates as an invasive, belligerent, radical, global empire determined to re-make the world in its own image, with no regard for national sovereignty or (foreign) human life.

• The nuclear family of husband, wife, and children is a fundamental building block of Western society that has been seriously compromised.

• The notion that the only prerequisite for sex is that the parties consent to it -- all other considerations be damned -- is a radical one that no civilized society has long endured after adopting.

• Faith in God and Jesus Christ is another fundamental building block of Western society that has been seriously compromised.

• Most Americans today lack basic shared notions of good and evil, right and wrong, or historical memory, signaling the destruction of society in any meaningful sense.

All the facts you need to consider these sorts of contentions are at the local library in government-approved books. If you prefer to shoot the messenger and label me a "conspiracy theorist," the only thing you have revealed is about yourself -- and it's not good.

My Generation Is Contemptible (But So Is Yours)

I'm a member of Generation X, the cohort of latchkey kids who arrived on the scene in the mid-1960s through the late 1970s. While I do share certain traits with my generational peers -- dysfunctional childhood, cynicism, and an independent streak -- I couldn't stand most of these people when growing up and can barely tolerate them now. After all, their overriding trait is not to take anything seriously, a slacker outlook that they deem the essence of cool. This mindset reeks of smugness, presuming that all the great mysteries of life have been solved and that the noblest objective is to chill out and have a good time. People who give off any sort of piety or sincerity are viewed with suspicion, to be mocked at best and shunned at worst. Basically, Gen-Xers are a bunch of spoiled brats who look down their noses on a society that made boredom and disillusionment their greatest challenges.

Generation Y and/or the Millennials -- those born from the start of the 1980s through the late 1990s -- are contemptible in their own right. They are too shallow to be independent or cynical; quite the contrary, they are corporate America's wet dream because they are Pollyannish "team players" through and through. It's refreshing that they don't retreat into smug slackerdom as my generation has done, but they too have no convictions about anything. Apart from that, they have the attention span of a gnat and are functionally illiterate, having grown up on a diet of technological distractions that renders any abstraction or reflection impossible.

What about the Baby Boomers? Please. This is the generation that bankrupted America in every way imaginable, be it financially, culturally, or spiritually. We can thank Baby Boomers for open borders, affirmative action, the EPA, decadent music, rampant abortions, the sexual revolution, no-fault divorce, skyrocketing crime, expelling God from education, and many other ills that are too depressing to tabulate. Even worse, the Boomers view themselves as heroic for having perpetrated these outrages.

As for their parents, the Greatest Generation, I admit they paid their dues with interest by having to deal with the Great Depression and World War II. What makes them contemptible is that, despite having helped defeat fascism abroad, they gleefully embraced it here at home with FDR's New Deal, a fascistic power grab that was cloaked (as always) in the language of idealism. The Four Freedoms were offensive on their face and should have been rejected; there is no such thing as freedom from want or freedom from fear, and that generation disgraced its ancestors by asking Leviathan to bestow such "freedoms."  America never has been the same, as the welfare state became a permanent cancer that has grown only larger and deadlier ever since. It's impossible now even to question the slew of unconstitutional restraints and wealth transfers stemming from that era; both major political parties take these offenses as a given, and I'll wager that most surviving members of the Greatest Generation would express pride in this dismal fact.

So what generation do I respect? None living, that much is certain. If Calvin Coolidge was the last president who strikes me as halfway decent, there is little chance I'm going to find much to praise in the people who have elected every president ever since.