A Call to Action – Amanda Green

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

A Call to Action – Amanda Green

 

There’s been a joke running around the members of Mad Genius Club that some of have been upset not to be named among the “world’s worst” or the “world’s most evil” by those folks who not only seem to bow down and worship at the feet of traditional publishing but also those who are so quick to condemn anyone who is a white male of a certain age or, basically, anyone who doesn’t agree with them. We’ve had some fun in posts where we’ve challenged the SJW and GHH sets over their demands that we all cling to their visions of what is politically and socially correct. The problem is, they have completely missed not only the point but the boat to the point.

 

To start, those of us in the United States still live in a country where we can express our opinions – within certain guidelines – without fear of recrimination. They want to stop this. If we aren’t sensitive to their victimhood, we need to be silenced. We are a danger to them, it seems, and so we must be muzzled and re-educated. What they don’t get is that the harder they try to silence us, the louder we will become. Further, they will find that there are a lot more who believe as we do than they ever expected. Why? Because we’ve been polite and patient for much too long. We’ve let them talk over us and step on us. Instead of fighting back, we’ve kept our heads down and done our jobs. We haven’t claimed our victimhood and proclaimed it to the skies.

 

Things started changing for so many of us in the publishing industry when there was finally a viable alternative to traditional publishing available to us. No longer did we have to keep our mouths shut about how we felt for fear of having our options dropped or of being blackballed in the industry. Still, it was a slow journey into the light. We’d hidden our political beliefs for so long and had been so indoctrinated with the belief that admitting we were libertarian or – gasp – conservative would lose us readers.

 

But then events started happening that pushed us to the point where we could no longer hold our tongues. Looking around, authors who had been hiding in the political closet for so long saw the new indie authors saying what they thought in social media and on their blogs. Looking at the best seller lists on Amazon, hearts beat a little faster and a spark of hope flared to see authors who shared the same libertarian values these long-silent authors held not only selling their books but selling well.

 

The breaking point for many came when SFWA declared war on Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg and suspended the operation of the Bulletin when some of the more vocal of the SJWs and GHHers cried foul over some columns written by Resnick and Malzberg and a chicks in chainmail cover. The oh-so-delicate GHHers were insulted by Resnick and Malzberg reminiscing on how, years ago, they thought a female editor was attractive in her swimsuit. You see, that was sexist. They’d never say that about a man. Victimhood in action!

 

What is so funny about all this is that the vast majority of authors at Mad Genius Club are female and proud of it. Yet all of us, and Sarah in particular, have been attacked for not being true to our sex. I guess we are supposed to embrace our victimhood and wear it like a badge of honor. Sorry but not only no but hell no. I am not a victim because I choose not to be one. I know how to handle a man who treats me disrespectfully, just as I know how to deal with a woman who does the same thing. I don’t want a hand up – or a hand out – just because of my sex.

 

But that isn’t the way the game is played, at least not by the other side, and not just when it comes to what gender we happen to be. The latest salvo by them comes not because we have tried to silence them – we haven’t. We’ve been too busy pointing out the lack of logic in their arguments and laughing at them. No, the latest salvo comes because, gasp, someone dared publish a list of “21 Conservative Writers to Read at the Beach”. Included in that list are authors like Larry Correia, Col. Tom Kratman, John Ringo, and our own Kate Paulk and, of course, Sarah.

 

Oh the howls of outrage. How dare anyone publish a list of – gasp – conservative authors. Why, that sort of list ought to be hidden from view for fear the impressionable minds of our young might be contaminated by their evil values. Independent thought, capitalism, individuality, tenacity, patriotism are all, apparently, values that we shouldn’t be proclaiming. Or maybe it’s just the fear that there might be heterosexual males of the anglo persuasion and women who love them that scares the other side. Frankly, if it wasn’t so sad to know that there are folks who are actually worried by lists like this, it would be funny. Next thing you know, they’ll be suggesting books written by these authors be burned.

 

Oh, wait, they have already basically done that when they “suggested” that Toni Weisskopf rein in Larry Correia and his attempt to “stuff” the Hugo ballot box. Of course, Larry did no such thing. All he did was what others, including darlings of the SJW ilk, have done for years. He published his list of authors/works he was going to vote for and encouraged others to consider doing the same. But, you see, that’s wrong when you aren’t of the “right way of thinking”.

 

So now we have the list of 21 conservative authors and the howls of outrage have gone out. The first I saw of it was on the internet where there were collective vapors being suffered by the delicate flowers of the GHH crowd. I could almost picture them in their hoop skirts sitting in the shade, fanning themselves. The only problem with that is it is an insult to all the true Southern ladies. Those ladies have spines of steel. They may speak softly but they make the big stick carried by Teddy Roosevelt look like a twig.

 

Then my attention was directed to Twitter. Now, I hate Twitter. It is a time sink I just don’t want to get involved with. However, this time, I read with a mix of disbelief and amusement as two of the GHH/SJW crowd decided it was time to teach us the error of our ways, or at least to warn the rest of humanity away from us.

 

It began with a tweet from Damien Walter, he of the Guardian infamy, tweeted that he might just do a column on “scifis [sic] most crazy, fascist authors” and he asked for nominations. Cora Buhlert responded with “Kratman, Wright, VD, Correia, the entire Mad Genius Club, prepper fic authors, anybody in that Buzzfeed article.”

 

Those of you who follow Mad Genius Club probably remember Ms. Buhlert. She came to my attention back in February when she misconstrued something Kate had written and ran with it, condemning Kate and anyone who agreed with her because, you know, Vox Day is evil, SFWA is wonderful and GHHers ought to rule the world. Well, to be fair, she didn’t say the last but pretty much implied it. Needless to say, both Kate and I responded. You can see my post here and Kate’s here.

 

Obviously, we must have hurt her feelings because now, according to her, we are fascist. At least that is the inference based on the Twitter conversation between her and Damien. Now, I find it rather amusing in a sad sort of way that someone living in Germany, someone who I would expect has some knowledge of history, doesn’t know the definition of fascist. But, in case she happens to wander over here and sees this post, let me help her out.

 

From Miriam-Webster Online, fascism is defined as:

a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government

 

Funny, I don’t remember a time when Sarah or any of the other authors listed have said their way of belief is the only right way. They haven’t said the SJWs and GHHers shouldn’t be allowed to write their message fiction. What they, and the rest of us, have said is that they are tired of being told what to write by the powers that be in New York. They are tired of being told by a vocal minority that they should write only about certain types of people and that having male heroes who are white and heterosexual is wrong.

 

But they, and we, are the fascists because we won’t silence ourselves. We speak out against those who condemn us. We refuse to accept our victimhood, much less proclaim it and demand concessions because of it. We would rather forge our own way in the world, teaching our children how to stand strong and proud.

 

In my darkest times, I have visions of a country where the SJWs and the GHHers rule. Writers of uplifting fiction, those who tell stories readers want to read, will have to go underground. Our stories will be whispered in the dark of night because the PC police will come to confiscate our manuscripts and take away our keyboards. We’ll find ways to smuggle our stories to hackers who will put them online in parts of the internet most folks don’t want to know about. But those who don’t want to give in to tyranny will find a way. Just as the Soviet dissident authors found ways to smuggle their works out of the then Soviet Union, we, too, will find ways to get our stories out.

 

Then reality hits and I hope things won’t get that bad. I look at the best seller lists on Amazon and elsewhere and see more and more of the stories I want to read making those lists and fewer and fewer of the message fiction there. Then I look at outlets like Liberty Island – which has also come under attack from the other side for, gasp, being conservative – and I have hope.

 

Besides, when the other side has such a poor grasp on reality, we really can’t accept their claims of supremacy and let them win. I don’t know about you but when I was growing up, my parents taught me not to bow down to bullies. I didn’t do it then and I have no plans to do it now. I might be battered and bruised some as a result, but I’m willing to pay that price to write – and to read – what I want. Can you say the same?

 

 

 

669 thoughts on “A Call to Action – Amanda Green”

  1. Frankly, I’m a tad bored of the whole ruckus. I filtered some IPs, blacklisted some publishers, and went on. That said… yes, the sexplotaition… the horror!

    And a remake

    1. We’re all bored with it. But they aren’t, and they keep attacking us… Which I suppose means we’re doing something right over at Mad Genius Club.

    2. Ah, but it’s not sexploitation when it’s women ogling scantily clad men. That’s just getting back at men for all the years and years they’ve done it to us, don’cha know?

      Gag. I really do detest double standards, especially when they are as gleefully advocated as they are by the SJWs and GHHers.

      1. Well… I’ve become an Equal Opportunity Reader. I don’t mind male nudes on covers, partial or full, but I refuse to buy any book were the female character isn’t as undressed. Not going into angle of the shot and similar, not the point. Still…

        One of the things with “the New World” of publishing is that I can scratch one of the Big Five and [*]… I still have lots of books.

        [*] One of the Big Five is completely off limits. Several SF imprimpts also are.

      2. …reminiscing on how, years ago, they thought a female editor was attractive in her swimsuit. You see, that was sexist. They’d never say that about a man.

        Yeah, but the Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer didn’t look half bad in those Jockey ads of the 1970s and 1980s. That poster he did in Jockeys, with the proceeds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation … it certainly sold, and I don’t think it was just because of charitable hearts.

        On the other hand, the gentlemen in question might well have never complimented male editors in that way for a number of reasons, not the least of which being a good possibility that none of them had a ‘bod’ worth seeing in a swimsuit.

        1. You know how shocked I am when women are checking out some dude in varying degrees of nakedness, how utterly and completely appalled? 😐

          Yeah, neither do I.

          Feel free to ogle as many professional models/athletes as you want. Concerns me not in the least.

          1. I only have an issue when those same women proceed to tell me what I’m supposed to find attractive in a woman. Hypocrisy is unattractive for any gender.

            1. No argument. But most the women of my acquaintance, and I suspect most around here, are perfectly capable of enjoying a well built man without concerning themselves with where my gaze stumbles.

              Those others are to be discounted, mocked and/or ignored.

              1. Agreed.

                Unfortunately, I’ve got women on my friends list that will post a meme about how real men prefer X type of woman followed by a picture of some hot guy. To make matters worse, they never seem to get why some of us have a problem with that.

                1. One thing is pretty certain when it comes to humans, not everyone agrees on who (or what) is worth buying a poster of and putting it up on the walls.

              2. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, either sex, any age. I may enjoy looking at good looking adult men in a bit different way than the others, but beauty in general is always enjoyable, never mind where you find it.

  2. What amazes me about the comments on that link is how proud some of the commentators are of being so closed minded. They have no idea why the books listed are condemned by their leaders, all they know is that they have been ordered to attack.

    “I would NEVER read anything by any of these people” is trumpeted as proof of virtue. Then they go on to say that these works of which they have no knowledge whatsoever are absolute garbage. Why? They don’t know, they just have been told to say that.

    1. And yet we are the fascists. We at least try to read their books. Often we can’t get through them, but that’s true of any number of books, no matter what the politics of the author. If I’m not interested in the story, if it doesn’t grab me and keep my interest, chances are I won’t read it. But I will, at the very least, look at the preview before saying “I won’t read it”. How many of them can honestly say the same?

      1. Huey Long was right.

        He was asked whether Fascism could come to America, and he said sure, but it would call itself anti-Fasicm.

      2. to be honest, I probably don’t try to read their books. If the cover doesn’t catch my eye, I won’t read the blurb.

        If I don’t read the blurb, I probably won’t get a sample (if it’s an ebook).

        If I don’t get a sample, I’m not likely to buy the book, unless it’s an author I’ve got experience with.

        If I don’t read the blurb on the back, (in paper) I’m not likely to find the characters interesting enough to spend the money.

    2. This is the key lesson. Today’s Left has abandoned all pretense of being about ideas but are solely about accumulating the correct list of people to hate.

  3. They won’t care for the comparison, but this behavior (as described) reminds me of the denunciations of the ‘Harry Potter’ books we heard when our sons were attending a Christian school (an unsettling number of years ago now). If the criticism was delivered in person, my wife would ask, “Have you read any of the books?” And invariably the answer would be, “No.” At which my wife would say, “Then you don’t really have an opinion. You’re just parroting someone elses.”

    1. That’s a perfect example, Ron. The only problem is that these folks, like so many of them who condemned the Harry Potter books will default to the “X says they are evil, so they must be” simply because of who X is. These folks completely forget that, in doing so, they have abdicated their right to make their own decisions and have become sheeple. How long before they become the human version of lemmings and follow the rest of their ilk over the metaphorical cliff?

      1. I can sympathize with people who don’t want to read X because a family member did and didn’t like it, or because their religious leader read it and said “no, this insults/contradicts/questions our belief system, don’t read it.” I don’t agree, but I can understand. But “John Stewart says its bunk” or “[twitterati person] says it’s bad so don’t read it” I have no patience for. As you say, like the lemmings of legend . . .

          1. “So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick. If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are.”

            Alice Cooper

            2. As old as Plato’s Apology of Socrates — everyone assumes wisdom is transferable.

        2. I only have so much time to read, and due to severe dyslexia I read very slowly. I really don’t want to waste my time on books I won’t enjoy in some manner. I have enjoyed book which do a good job of putting forth ideas with which I disagree, so that is not my problem. I just don’t see reading books that ultimately provide nothing and in some cases leave me feeling robbed of the time and effort I have to put in to read them.

          So, yes, if a person whose opinions I have come to respect says that a book is ‘flingable’ for reason, I will take that it into account when deciding if I will attempt it.

          1. …I will take that into account when deciding…

            Ah! People who think for themselves! It’s so exciting!

            I have a hard time taking the folks who would parrot Cora Buhlert or Damien Walters seriously, but if they ever make a cogent argument I’ll give ’em a listen.

          2. So, yes, if a person whose opinions I have come to respect says that a book is ‘flingable’ for reason, I will take that it into account when deciding if I will attempt it.

            But see, that’s where you differ from the others. You take into account the opinion of someone you respect and, unless I miss my guess, they’ve had to do something beyond parrot the current PC message to earn that respect.

            1. UM?

              Sarah, do you parrot current PC messages?

              (At this time and in this place I am not going to give any other of the names I consult, some might not want to admit to association.)

              1. Oh, so NOT fair. If Sarah tried to parrot PC messages, she’d probably choke from it. Since I don’t want that to happen, let’s not even joke about it, okay? Especially since she is one of those I consult as well. 😉

                1. Perish the thought — our Sarah, a dead parrot! Deceased, pushing up daisies, singing in the choir invisible, perished, deceased, gone from this vale of tears, ceased to be, pining for the fjords, shuffled off this mortal coil.

                2. …*snort* *gigglefit into hot chocolate*

                  Okay, I imagined Sarah with a macaw parrot hand puppet, reading out loud quotes from the SJWs and GHHs screeds, with sarcastic asides. I’m not sure where my mind’s been lately, but it sure is strange what it’s brought back…!

                    2. Three, and part time job selling used books and packing to move. Well, to be fair I thought instead of a written post. Like, maybe a chat with Huns Saturday nights, where you guys could call in and ask questions and hang out and throw virtual carp, and then I post it on Sunday.

                    5. Might work out if you pitched the idea to a group like PJTV or one of the internet radio stations that might help with production.

                      Just a thought.

                      Hmmm…

                    7. *laughs* well, only as long as they’re enjoyed by yourself in the production because the other risk you run is melting your brain from the sheer amount of undiluted dumb.

                      Housemate tried to do that with a certain something and he could only do two, the source material was so horribly bad. The swearing increased along with the colorful descriptions and I had to run away very often so the recording wouldn’t pick me up laughing myself into hysterics.

                    8. If that’s what I think it is, the source material was so horribly bad that you can’t really compare it to anything else. I mean, it’s really, really that bad. Even my worst stuff is astronomically better than that crap.

                    9. Yeah, those videos. I think afterward he logged into a game and stared at his pretty female elf character for a while, because she’s pretty, it was a soothing balm to the brain, and would occasionally rant at how MFing bad it was. Oh, and bounce a few theories he picked up off of me.

                    11. It’s really a shame we couldn’t find a way to record him yelling at someone stupid over the phone. His ‘push to talk’ key on Ventrilo would sometimes get stuck, and the whole channel would go quiet to hear the epic tearing down.

                      There was a particular incident that my brain summarizes as “MySQL server databases are not copy/paste into Windows Servers when they were installed on Linux-based servers. They are also not immediately translatable from a Hardened Gentoo server to Windows. Also, not backing any of that up before doing the paste over and thinking that would work… why the nine hells are you near any kind of server?”

                      Oh and the best part? The person who did it called up housemate specifically to ask if it was possible. The reply was “no. Don’t touch it. DO NOT DO ANYTHING. YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED. I DO NOT CARE IF YOU ARE THE SUPERVISOR OF THAT TEAM. THE FACT YOU MADE THE SUGGESTION TELLS ME YOU ARE INCOMPETENT AND GOT THERE USING SEXUAL FAVORS.”

                      Something like that.

                      The screaming was epic, the rage towered, the Australian tendency towards insults, turned loose. He’s developed a vast dislike of working with American techs… well, tech supervisors for a reason. Hilariously, the guy in the US threatened to sue if housemate didn’t fix it. There was no way to. The guy in the US had deleted everything.

              2. Not if I can help it. BTW as soon as I manage to get over my unbending dislike of the post office Don Camilo Takes The Devil By The Tail shall wend its papery way to you 😉

                  1. I have bought apparently three copies of each book — another reason to go electronic. I LOSE everything. I refuse to sell those, so I send them to friends.

                    1. We got a number of them in a Paris secondhand bookshop, but I wouldn’t know which ones we have (they’re still back in the Philippines.) Great fun. I should probably start collecting my own sets anyway because I figure my youngest brother (who likes books as much as I do) will probably end up with ’em.

                    4. Since I was finishing off my croissant, I looked it up; found a paperback of Little World, and ordered it. The book cost about 5 odd dollars. The shipping? Twenty. That’s my budget for ‘my random bits and pieces’, but I think it was worth it. Kindle has the collection for under 11 bucks, but Camilo’s the kind of book I move away from electronics to enjoy.

                  2. It is due to our esteemed hostess that I discovered Don Camilo. 🙂

                    There is a project in Great Britian to translate and publish ALL the stories in English, something that has not been done heretofore. (The original translation of Little World was missing a few stories.)

        3. There’s a difference between “I don’t/won’t like this” and “This is bad/evil.” Since time is finite and books are, near as makes no difference, not, it makes sense to listen to the opinions of those you have determined to have tastes similar to your own. Learn from the mistakes of others, you won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

          1. Learn from the mistakes of others, you won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

            On a slightly differrent trail: I have often told The Daughter that I made enough stupid mistakes growing up and, as there was plenty of stupid mistakes available as options in life, she certainly didn’t have to repeat any of the ones that I had already tried.

      2. I try not to call people ‘sheeple.’ However bad their behavior, they remain human. And some of them are capable of listening.

        When our younger son was in the hospital some years back, my wife was down in the gift shop and paused in front of a display of ‘Harry Potter’ books. An older woman touched her arm and said, ‘Those are satanic, you know.’

        As I said, Lin always responds to statements like that by asking, ‘Have you read any of them?’ The lady admitted she had not, but her pastor had told his parishioners that they contained magic and witchcraft, so —

        Lin assured her that Satan made no appearance in the books to date. And as for the magical elements, they were more like the wish, when you were a kid, that just the act of wishing would make things so. The stories themselves, as she read them, were more about bravery and loyalty and staying true to what you believe is right. And then she described the ‘Mirror of Erised’ scene, which has always been a great favorite of both of us.

        When she was done, the lady nodded and said, ‘I may have to read that. Just the first book.’

        1. True, and I don’t use the term very often. But I have little patience for those who abdicate personal choice in favor of following what someone else said, especially someone famous, just because of who that person is. Yes, as TXRed said above, I can understand why they might listen to what their priest or another family member said. Still, it is up to them to make an informed choice/decision. And good for your wife. She sounds like a wise and kind woman.

        2. I had carefully explained quite a number of things to people who were avoiding the Potter’s books. Things like the use of train station, which was really reference to a British boarding school tradition — similar to the American camp bus.

          I had no end of amusement when I came to the two grave stones were engraved with (unreferenced) Bible verses which proved to be important clues.

        3. People make choices. When they choose to hand their decision making over to another person or to the collective wishes of their tribe, then they choose to join the flock.

          Flock ’em.

    2. I remember seeing a list that included Madeleine L’Engle and C.S.Lewis as “New Age” authors to be avoided. I’ve read nearly all of Lewis’ books and essays, and quite a few of L’Engle’s (2/3 finished with one now).
      I’ve never seen the evil ascribed to them. Perhaps I’m warped.

      On the other hand, these ‘arbitors of righteousness’ attribute to themselves the sole authority to decide for others; and if you reject it you prove their point. It’s an old game, and has been played better by past despots. All mouldering.

      I expect the same results of the new batch,

      1. I can confirm that the afore-mentioned Christian school sent home a list of books that were ‘not recommended’ for summer reading or subjects for book reports. I could kinda see L’Engle, but the inclusion of Lewis gobsmacked me. My sons will remember it as the dinner at which Daddy yelled ‘But he’s one of the great Christian apologists of the twentieth century!’ and dropped a forkful of mashed potatoes in his lap.

        (I suspect these ‘lists’ get passed from school to school and congregation to congregation, and likely no-one after the first hand-off could tell you why a particular author or book was on it.)

        1. That reaction made me laugh… and yes, I’m surprised, too. I grew up in teh most, er, fundamental of churches (no affiliations) and they didn’t have a problem with Lewis. I think L’Engle was considered shady, but that didn’t stop me from reading her.

          1. I wondered if some “idiot” looked at the Nardia stories with the fauns & dryads and “thought” pagan myths (ie bad).

            Still stupid but slightly (very slightly) more understandable than banning Lewis theological books.

            1. Certainly some people disapproved of Narnia. Some people disapprove of *fiction*. My great-grandmother and her generation commonly thought that fiction (and plays for that matter) were sinful, “of the devil” or what have you, because they are lies.

              I find it a little bit hard to dispute that. Someone pretending to be someone else in a play is lying. Sort of. A story that is made up, isn’t True, so…

              Lots of other people thought that was silly… just like they thought playing cards wasn’t a sin so long as you weren’t gambling, then it was just a game.

              A lot of the subtleties get lost in translation, but while I don’t worry about it myself, I can see the point of disapproving of stories with magic in them as sort of an extension of disapproving of… putts, I can’t spell it enough to find the spellchecker… the *board* thing that lets the spirit world talk to you. That thing. In any case I never allowed “spooky” reality television or “pet psychics” in my house. Are ghost hunter shows satanic? No. But they pretend to be true and our brains are adept at lying to us. I’d laud a minister who preached not to play with the occult, even if I disagreed with him about which things counted and not.

              1. Ouija board. I’ve also seen uncanny things happen when people were being stupid with a tarot deck. The emphasis on “being stupid:” when you get a bunch of teenaged girls together, all really wanting something “cool” to happen, you shouldn’t be surprised when things happen, either churned out of all that emotion, or because someone left a door wide open with the welcome mat out. IMHO there’s a world of difference between reading fantasy and sci-fi, and trying to contact the spirit world.

                1. Plain old cards, too; easy to make it a “question” format.

                  The joke version can be funny– it goes “Yes, no, maybe, I don’t know” by suit. Folks ask embarrassing questions and pretend to believe the “random” answer.

              2. Ouija board.

                I class it entirely differently, because– good heavens, we’ve got Biblical examples of Something Nasty coming through when you try to question the dead!

                1. I think they’re different, too. I suppose my point was that lots of people think that disapproving of a Ouija board is absolutely the same thing as thinking it’s a bad idea to watch Bewitched or read Harry Potter. So I try to be respectful of those who are, what I consider, on the far silly side of being worried about dumb things.

              3. The fun part is that once upon a time, magic meant “unknown casuality.” Drinking willow-bark tea was magic. As opposed to goetics, dealing with evil spirits — both evil and stupid — and theurgy, dealing with angels — intristically impious.

                The thing is that most of magic has been sorted out into two piles: don’t work, and Science. So if any old magic tricks that didn’t become Science work — well, one suspects evil spirits in the brew somewhere.

                    11. Amazing how many people tell you, you are up past your bedtime; especially when you have just been insisting you are a big girl and can stay up as late/get up as early as you want. 😉

                    12. “Baba Yaga’s Laptop” ranks up there with “Egregiöüs Ümläuts” (h/t Marko Kloos) for band names. 🙂

                    13. Egregiöüs Ümläuts

                      O, I like that.

                      Mind you, I took German in college, later, when I studied Koine Greek, it took me forever to remember to call them diaeresis.

                2. In fairness, the ancient Jews and the Catholic Church did organize it better than that… the stuff I could find is here, but shorter version for the Catholic side is that you’ve got to be trying to bypass natural law to perform your will, and according to a link I couldn’t verify the ancient Jews forbid specific things like “harm people with spells.”

                1. If you squint, they’re metaphors.

                  If you want the simpler things– He’s God. He can do that. We shouldn’t try to make the blind see with spit and dust, either.

                  I think it’s silly, but eh.

                2. Maybe it’s some kind of a memetic mutation of the historical banning of “theater?”
                  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14559a.htm

                  (Highly amused that I ended up finding enough info to find this mostly from vague claims that the Church banned theater “in the middle ages,” implying a much different thing than “banned Roman theater during and after the fall of Rome.” Thomas Aquinas apparently made an argument for the content being the actual sticking point, but most of the rest of folks were busy dealing with the day to day issues.)

          2. In my church, the pastor does a children’s sermon before the kids head out for “kid’s church”. Several years ago, the associate pastor did an entire series of youth sermons on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

            I guess Presbyterians are satanic too?

                1. I’m good, then. It’s Summer in Texas, my body temp is cooler than the ambient…

                  🙂

                    1. If you expend all your ordinance on Texas (it’s a big state) Alabama will take the opportunity to invade. Things to consider.

                    2. Nah. We’ve got a lot of it.

                      Mostly because we always figured we’d have to take out Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, then deal with both Carolinas as possibly Tennessee too.

                      We’ve got a whole other ball of wax put aside for Florida though. 😀

                    3. Well, I give up. I’m currently standing on 6th street in Austin. Lemme have it.

                      😐

                    5. Ah, c’mon! I’m standing right here in this liberal uto — uh, in Austin! Yes, Austin! Miles and miles away from DFW…

                      Would it help if I chipped in for gas?

                    12. Big place, DFW. So the weather’s a little different from one side to the other, and top to bottom.

                      Any particular place you’re interested in?

                      *innocent inquiry*

                    15. It’s Texas, if the grass is looking a little dead it must be Monday.

                      Rain’ll take care of it.

                    17. Nah, I don’t think he has nukes. Just diddly little heat-seekers.

                      Could be hard on the chili cook-offs, though.

                    21. Uh, do you really want to draw me into this as well. I happen to like living in Texas, even if it is humid as heck right now after a rain. I’d not appreciate it if you tried to bomb the whole state. 😉

                    24. I really don’t WANT to. It’s more of making sure Eamon goes down.

                      Just for you, I’ll wait until it cools off (if Texas is like Georgia, that should be sometime around December) just so I only have to get him. 🙂

                    30. *sigh*

                      Just remember, no matter what you see or hear, I’m nowhere near the DFW metroplex.

                    32. Guess I better stock up on chaff and decoys. Pretty sure I can come by enough hot air to fill a few decoys…

                    34. I think TX is hotter and more hispanic than GA. Dallas is more southern than Atlanta.

                    36. It’s not the humidity it’s the heat that’ll get you. I bet Albany doesn’t have a semi-permanent drought. I’ve lived on the banks of the AL river in summer. Drought is the worst. How Larry C ended the Dust Bowl in the Grimnoir series was epic.

                    38. Actually, we just ended a drought after God knows how many years.

                      And I’ll take a dry heat at 120 over 90 degrees and 95 percent humidity any day.

                      Though, admittedly, that might be a “Grass is always greener” kind of thing.

                    41. Since I’ve worked in both, I’ll agree with you. The molding area of the foundry I worked in for a while, which was 120, was much preferable to working outside in 90 degree heat with high humidity.

                      When the sweat will not evaporate, you don’t get any cooling from it. Or not NEARLY as much.

                    42. Don’t underestimate the power of humidity combined with high temps. An acquaintance went to school in Phoenix. Came home for the summer with someone she met from there. He announced to us all that he was looking forward to a nice cool summer. We told him just wait for the humidity to kick in. He suggested we were all wusses. By late July with the temps running in the high 90s and the humidity likewise he was wimpering.

                    43. Agreed – I grew up in inland So-Cal, where the only system we had for keeping cool during the summers were fans, and closing the windows at mid-morning and opening them after sun-down. Which worked … basically, it was dry heat, no matter how hot it got.

                      I went from there to northern Japan, where it would be in the high 80s with 100% humidity … and the humidity went around the clock. Total misery. Glasses of ice water sweated a huge pool of condensation around them, laundry — unless completely dried – sprouted mold. The area rug in the apartment where I lived with my infant daughter … also sprouted mold, in every place where she had sicked up on it as a crawler.
                      If I must have heat, make it dry heat. That is liveable. Humid heat is a torture.

                    2. Well, since they took over poor ol’ Charlie who lost his mind in the blog wars, I might be “the”. Haven’t tried to raise Alpha–

                      What was I talking about?

                1. Be careful, John Wesley said that anyone who taught predestination was going to h-ll. (Of course, he seems to have maintained that anyone who didn’t agree with everything he said or wrote was going there too, so it’s probably not much of an anathema as curses go.)

          1. I’ll note that for some SF is excluded too, because it’s stories about things “that don’t exist” — this would make you wonder, right, why they read fiction at all?

            1. I know that there have been some in the past who questioned fiction. Just stick with factual items, biography, history and the like. Sigh I have trouble with this, but then again that is because I recognize that much that passes itself as factual is not.

              2. IIRC, this attitude is reflected in the bafflement and/or disapproval of certain characters in the Anne of Green Gables series. */minor tangent*

                1. I found a website once which excoriated Anne of Green Gables and all things L.M. Montgomery because 1) Anne was not at all times a perfectly submissive wife and 2) Emily (of New Moon) had the second sight. I believe it my have been my first occurrence of deeply desiring to slap someone through my monitor.

                  Not, clearly, the last.

              3. So they pretty much don’t read the Old Testament?

                And they skip the parables?

                1. Whoever suggests that people are actually consistant haven’t been watching people for very long.

                  1. In a moment of evil, I told a friend of Robert’s (13 at the time) who told me his parents didn’t allow him to read anything but the Bible, so he wouldn’t come across sex or violence, some of the choice episodes from the Bible. His eyes got really round and he said “That’s not in my Bible.” I said “Then it’s not THE Bible.”

                    2. …What kinda bible did he have??? o_O I had an illustrated (with lovely paintings) Children’s Bible where everything was told in story format, and… yeah. The difference between ‘love’ and ‘desire’ or ‘lust’ was rather emphasized and we had a picture of Goliath getting hit by the stone, blood spraying from the wound. Lost the thing in a flood, unfortunately; it was a book I loved reading.

                    3. I have read Children’s Bibles where they gloss over the part where Goliath dies.

                      The “He was crusifiedmumbleburried AND ROSE FROM THE DEAD, AMEN, LIFE EVER LASTING– LOOK, HERE’S A CROSS COVERED WITH FLOWERS!!!”

                      (I actually like the symbolism of the cross with flowers, but substituting it for the crucifix seems a bit… off. I’m not a fan of the hyper focus on the suffering, but acknowledgement of the price paid….)

                    4. I think I had one of those. It’s been way too many years to remember where it got to, but I did have one, and I probably read about 2/3 of it before I got to something that just didn’t interest me any more.

                    5. One assumes his bible skipped pretty much the entire old testament, and at least half of the new; maybe three quarters.

                    6. This was the same kid who — and mind you he was class valedictorian, just really PROTECTED — four years later is talking to my kid and starts “pumping for information” “So, these cons you and your family do? Who do you con? How much money do you get?” Took Robert a second and then he broke out laughing, “John, you moron. Con is short for convention. As in science fiction and fantasy. My family and I write the stuff. What were you going to do, call the police on us?”

                    7. LOL

                      Yes, well, you see, there are these cons, where we use fictitious science to rope the mark…Oh, no, I best be quite about that.

                      Correction: There are these gatherings where we promote, um, stories to, um, sell books to, um, an eager audience of potential readers. Yes. That’s what it is.

                    8. I used to work for a guy who routinely hired valedictorians for summer help. You can color me not impressed. I got one, a Mormon kid, for two summers who was a good hard worker, down to earth and had common sense. Then he went on his mission and never came back for any more summers. Of all the others that were hired none came back for a second summer (thankfully) and the best I can say about any of them is that one had an excellent singing voice. Mind you, we were surveying timber sales, so that talent was of limited value.

                    10. Heh. I read the bible through when I had just learned to read, one summer on my uncle’s farm, partly because there was nothing else to read, and partly because that specific bible was quite impressive looking. It had pretty awesome pictures (what I remember of the style, probably Gustave Dore). It was in Finnish, but had been printed in USA, so probably it was something my grandfather had brought back from his stay there. It was really big, with gold (probably not real gold leaf, but it looked good enough to a kid) and embossed leather (the leather probably was real) covers.

                      Was probably my first exposure to stories with fornication, and bastards, and lots of mayhem and slaughter. And all kinds of… well, frankly, in some ways especially the Old Testament reminds one of soap operas.

                      I really liked that bible. No idea what happened to it.

                    11. I didn’t realize it for a very long time, but the kid’s Bible I had growing up included the Apocrypha. I couldn’t figure out how come no one else read about Tobit and the Maccabees . . . ‘Course, we were also probably the only family in that (Protestant) congregation to make hamentaschen at Purim, too. (Have you priced poppyseed filling lately? The real stuff? Yowch!)

                    13. Price poppyseed filling? Cringe. Just price the poppy seeds. Cringe. Tell me again there is no inflation. Grumble…

                      Aside: I very quietly booed and stomped whenever the pastor mentioned Haman during a sermon on Esther at Purim … fortunately he and those who sit near by know me and they have a sense of humor.

                    14. “There are these gatherings where we promote, um, stories to, um, sell books to, um, an eager audience of potential readers. Yes. That’s what it is.”

                      That’s insufficient warning. The time that I learned that “her jaw dropped” was not hyperbole was standing behind a girl in her young teens in the registration line at a con. People in steampunk getups kept walking by.

                      Then, she was wearing a tie-dyed Star Trek T-shirt so once she learned to control the jaw she had perfect camouflage.

                    15. I am staff on an Anime con, and on a Board overseeing that con, a SF/F con and a start-up Furry con. Heard and seen things that came quite close to making my own jaw drop, but I am not sure you can really warn people about some of that. They likely won’t believe you.

        3. My God, I can just imagine my Father’s reaction if any Church we attended had sent home such a list. The Pastor would have spent the remainder of his life hiding under the stairs, curled into a ball.

          My Father was the adopted son of a Methodist Minister, and grew up in the 1930’s. He had scant patience with mealy mouthed prissy preachers, and none for idiots.

          1. My father, apparently at one time Had Words with the local priest over the whole Banned in Boston list.

            The priest told him that that sort of list was for those weak in their faith, not strong like my father.

            My father did not like that attitude.

            1. My paternal Grandfather was a man with a Call. I don’t remember him, but I have had the good fortune to meet several such people in my lifetime, not all of them Christians. None of them have struck me as the “This is too dangerous for you to read” type, although I CAN imagine them coming flat out and calling something so much tripe.

              I sometimes wonder if the control-freak type of minister/priest/what-have-you is reacting to his own insecurities because he HASN’T been Called.

            2. It is prescribed in the Bible. Indeed, the Pauline epistle enjoins Christians who have strong consciences not to eat meat sacrificed to idols in front of those who had weak consciences, for fear of encouraging them to do likewise.

              1. Paul is about consideration of other’s weaknesses.

                For example: most people agree that it is sensible to avoid watching graphic horror films with children who are at a stage of development where they cannot separate fantasy from reality. There are a few adults who seem to have never gotten past that stage. If I knew someone like that I wouldn’t suggest we go to the complete Saw film festival together.

                I have no trouble with that as an idea, to me it is entirely reasonable. It crosses the line to unreasonable when someone asserts that, because a few people may not be able to handle certain content, no one should to be allowed to have that content.

                1. Nod. Some people have found it a good idea to have “fences” between them and sinful behavior.

                  They know that certain things will lead themselves into sinful behavior.

                  So they “build a fence” by not being involved in things, that while not sinful would, lead themselves into sin.

                  As you said, the fence is a good idea for them but the problem occurs when they require everybody to use that fence.

                  1. It’s a good idea to put fences on yourself for other things. I know in a depressive mode, for instance, I get addicted to fan fiction (Mostly Jane Austen. Yes, I know, lame) and that the tics I learn from reading a lot of it will make my writing worse. So… it’s been years since I’ve read it. I just don’t GO to the site. That makes it much easier.

                    1. Although I am sure that some of the Austen fanfic is very nice, there really is only one Jane Austen, although Georgette Heyer might do in a pinch.

                    2. I like good fanfic set in my current fandom. However, the authors are libprog kool-aid drinkers. Being surprised that someone is gay, or surprised at their choice of lover is not homophobia.

                      Maybe this isn’t an egregious flaw.

                      Shilling for gay rights is intrusive on my porn.

                    3. Eh. My fanfic wasn’t porn, but yeah. Women lib doesn’t belong in the regency
                      <is in the middle of a novella with Luce and Nat that no one who doesn't read AFGM will even GET they're gay. Attached, sure…

                    4. Where is this novella going to be published? I don’t want to miss any Nat/Luce.

                    8. “Being surprised that someone is gay, …

                      Because you can tell by looking?

                      … or surprised at their choice of lover …

                      Because nobody ever looks at a straight couple and ask, “What does she see in him?

                      … is not homophobia.

                      Neither is what they term “homophobia” an actual phobia, which means they are disparaging true phobic conditions. That is offensive to all phobia sufferers and those who feel strongly sympathetic for them. I know I’m offended; aren’t you? Shame on anybody who would make light of phobia!

                    9. Nor is not wishing to be hit on by someone of the same sex, homophobia. It irritates me immensely that a man hitting on a woman who is uninterested in him is sexual harassment; but a man hitting on another man who is uninterested in him is homophobia if he makes even the mildest objection.

                    1. Readability and beta reading are necessary in any fic. Your idea and/or your characters may be appealing, But I won’t read your story if you can’t spell, and other basic requirements of grammar.

        4. My sons will remember it as the dinner at which Daddy yelled ‘But he’s one of the great Christian apologists of the twentieth century!’ and dropped a forkful of mashed potatoes in his lap.

          Too Catholic. And, as you’ll find out if you walk into the wrong “Christian” store, they do not carry Catholic Bibles– on CHRISTIAN Bibles…..

          2. Aren’t Catholics Christians? You all look alike to this Jew. Thrown carp will be used for gefilte fish.

            1. It’s like the new sister in law talking about how the husband’s maiden great aunt isn’t really part of the family…..

            2. Are Jews for Jesus Jews?

              It is perhaps even stronger in Christianity because they know they broke away, and there have to be some pretty big flaws involved to justify schism. Like, false teaching.

              1. Well…..

                Some of us rejected the “false teachings” of the Roman Catholic Church. [Smile]

                Oh Mary, God knows His Own and I’m sure He’ll consider plenty of Roman Catholics as His Own.

                Now, I’m not so sure about the Unitarian Universalists. [Sad Smile]

                1. Which always reminds me of the joke about what you get if you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with a Universalist-Unitarian … someone who goes around knocking on doors for no particular reason.

                  Yes, I’m here all week. Try the veal and don’t forget to tip your server…

                  1. Chuckle Chuckle

                    Oh, I prefer fish and chips over veal.

                    Of course, somebody I know got in trouble because he thought “tipping the server” meant “tipping over the server”. [Evil Grin]

                  3. Tip my server???? Sister, you don’t know how much work it has taken to get him to straighten up even this much!

                2. “Some of us rejected the “false teachings” of the Roman Catholic Church. [Smile]”

                  See? They have to justify the schism in their own eyes.

                    1. This brings to mind:

                      Rodney: Stop it! Stop it! This is the Congress! Stop it, I say! The enemy is out there!

                      Dickinson: No, Mr. Rodney, the enemy is here!

                      Rodney: No, no, I say he’s out there — England, England, closing in, cutting off our air — there’s no time — no air — …

                    2. Well, I didn’t take Mary’s comment as an “invitation” for an argument. It’s a reasonable statement from her point of view. Just a statement that I disagree with. [Smile]

            3. Foxfier brought this up a few days back, which makes me suspect that she got hit by this personally. But apparently there are some lunatic Protestants* somewhere who believe that Catholics aren’t really Christians. Even though they use the same bible and just a bunch of frills and lacy edges. Kind of like claiming the woman you work with isn’t a woman any longer when she shows up at the company Christmas party; because she is wearing an evening dress with lace and stockings, rather than her normal workplace garb.

              *And yes I have personally heard Catholics that claim Protestants aren’t really Christian and are going to hell, because the don’t follow the teaching of ‘The Church’. There is always a lunatic fanatic fringe to every group.

              1. My mom gets it pretty often, and our nice Mormon neighbors asked if we considered ourselves Christian because they were confused by “Christian, Catholic and Mormon” being used for some sort of study group or something.

                Mostly it amuses me, kind of like when folks claim the LotR movies ripped off WoW…..

                1. “Mostly it amuses me, kind of like when folks claim the LotR movies ripped off WoW…..”

                  Wait…WHAT!!!

                  I’ve never been able to read Tolkien, and have never played WoW, but that doesn’t prohibit me from knowing that Tolkien DIED before computer were INVENTED!

      2. Obviously the proponents of that list (I hate lists like that) had never read L’Engle or Lewis. These types of idiocy are why I have problems with any type of authority.

                1. I do that too. Only I guess I have a tendency to go too far. Meaning I ignore even good advice if it is presented in a wrong way, and do something like dismiss good opportunities just because I got told to do it instead of being given the time to make up my own mind.

                  And I suppose at least a few times some people have used that tendency against me. Good old reverse psychology – somebody doesn’t want me to do something, they tell me, in a way that sounds like an order, or start to pester me to do exactly that.

                  1. Yes – I also need to do it in my own way and in my own time. Reverse psychology doesn’t work on me either. My mother was so manipulative that I am now immune to most forms of manipulation. Thankfully I have a husband that I trust who tells me when I go to far and reigns me in. The only person in this entire world that has that power btw.

    3. There can be objections to the Harry Potter books that don’t require reading– some people do not like glorification of magic, even with all the distancing involved. (Actually did a post on this last month– you could make a good argument that the only magic-magic that’s taught at Hogwarts [as opposed to mutant ability type “magic”] is Divination, which does not work!)
      You don’t have to read the books to know they contain a positive representation of “magic.” There are some essays comparing and contrasting the “safeguards” with, say, Gandalf– Middle Earth is very different from modern day life, there’s no “hidden world” aspect, the only magic we see is by non-humans with direct divine connections, and I can’t remember the rest.

      That said, very few folks I heard insisting nobody else should read the books had any sort of good argument for it! (Note: I don’t have to agree with an argument for it to be good.)

      1. I read all the HP books at the same time my kids did. One of the discussions we had was how tyrannical, capricious yet totally accepted “The Ministry of Magic” was. There was nothing that even resembled “consent of the governed” in there.

        Given how widely read amongst the Millennials those books are….I wonder what effect that notion of government has on their world view?

          1. Sometimes I wonder if she’s just in the closet, or if she doesn’t quite realize how the ideology conflicts with her gut understandings.

            I know a bunch of people in the latter boat. The ideology is sold as compassion and caring, many people buy it.

            1. She’s not in the closet. If you read her “Where are they now” for their characters, they’re all government employees to “make a difference.” BAH.

              1. Yeah — probably bought the silliness and flaunting the investment without much critical thought.

                I did that with a shirt, once. It was a pretty awesome shirt, though.

                1. Someone did the math on how many wizards there are in Great Britain, based on ALL the magical students going to Hogwarts, and concluded that overwhelmingly they all have to work for the government.

              3. I would think she’s generally pro-government and pro-welfare considering she was on the dole while writing the first one. I wonder what her taxes are like and how she feels about them.

              4. Well, there’s a place for government employees even in a minarchist state. But yeah, to make a difference. . . .

                1. Unless that ‘make a difference’ is an attempt to change the government practices, and lessen its reach, from within. You could, maybe, approve of that. Maybe. In practice most of those who seem to start that way (unless they just claim it as a way to get votes) seem to get caught somewhere on the way though, and in the end change nothing.

            2. Like I say, liberals sometimes make great arguments against their own beliefs without realizing it. If only they could apply those insights to other things.

        2. I’ve just started “Order of the Phoenix” with my (precocious, God help me) eight-year-old. I am looking FORWARD to the discussions that will arise… *cackle*

      2. ” there’s no “hidden world” aspect,”

        Yeah. I read an essay that didn’t object so much to the magic as it did to the elitist special-little-snowflake approach.

    4. Actually if you look at the Harry Potter books, particularly the last one you can postulate a Christian influence.

      1. No kidding. It almost felt like a rebuke to everyone who accused the books of being anti-Christian.

        1. I was just glad she didn’t screw up Snape. From about book three on I was saying that if she didn’t handle him correctly– if she went for a cheap “surprise”– then it’d ruin the whole series.

  4. Y’know, I must say it hadn’t occurred to me to label my fellow mad ‘Genius’ Club members by their genitalia. I always thought of you as just my friends and fellow writers, working hard at writing, paying forward a bit. It’s not that having a vagina impedes one from writing. If anything, anyone looking for women who haven’t let their sex – or any real or imagined discrimination against it stop them for an instant – You, my friends ought to be seen as role models… but not in their doublethink world. You got there without claiming victim points. The thought processes – if they exist – are more than a little distorted. I must admit never thought of myself as a fascist – I thought they were inseparable from statists? It must be more doublethink and newspeak from Frau Clueless Cora the Camp-follower. She doesn’t really grasp subtlety or satire at all, like humor it is far beyond her linguistic grasp. Someone should tell her in plain terms that 1984 was a satirical warning not an instruction manual ;-). Still, I suppose we should worry, quiver under the bed. She’ll tell her ten followers – Clamps and his seven sock-puppets, frothing Anne and Damian-proof-there-is-a-village-missing-one.

    I do wish them luck shutting me up.

    1. The real problem with the Internet: in the old days folk only had to deal with their village’s idiots. Now folk have to deal with every other village’s idiots as well. Fortunately the benefits outweigh the detriments. (/humor)

    2. Dave, thanks. I have never thought of myself as a victim and certainly not because I was born female. I have just one question for you. Can I sell concessions when they try to shut you up? I know we can sell tickets to the fight, even though it would be one sided. You’d wipe the floor with them 😉

      Beware angering monkeys. They toss coconuts and more.

    3. Dave;

      I hold it is one of the founding principles of this-here Republic that attempts to shut someone up deserves, and dispositively ought, to excite a violent response. So, it’s an early step of the tyrants to delegitimize the “taking” of the law “into your own hands.” (Question: in a Republic where the individual citizen is BY LAW sovereign, where the hell ELSE does the law BELONG?) This is not a recent development. But your reaction is most welcome, for all you live elsewhere. I’d buy a ticket. Or a pay-per-view.

      M

    4. If anything, anyone looking for women who haven’t let their sex – or any real or imagined discrimination against it stop them for an instant – You, my friends ought to be seen as role models… but not in their doublethink world.

      There are women in past generations of my family who have gone and done what they wanted, like attending medical school — when there actually was discrimination against them. What they wanted was for the door to be open. When given the chance they worked hard and proved fully capable. My great aunt, a doctor, would have been horrified to learn that anyone would seriously suggest that people in groups that had suffered discrimination in the past should be held to lower professional standards to make up for the past exclusion.

              1. It had better be in Latin, or Greek, because otherwise it’ll go past double-entendre to triple at least.

            2. All right, dammit. I’m going to have to get the supplies together to restart the screen printing.

              Once I do, I’ll start offering to do some things far cheaper (on a piecework basis) than CafePress, or Zazzle, or other such, simply because I’ll do them in batches.

  5. Smack the would-be bullies until they apologize, but don’t let them impede progress. That’s the advice I was given growing up. Still sounds applicable.

    1. Doug, when my son was growing up and the schools had gone to zero tolerance, he came home one day because his best friend had gotten into trouble for standing up to bullies. I told him not to worry. He wasn’t to start the fight but he was to finish it. If anyone at the school said anything about, his father and I would deal with them, even if it meant homeschooling.

      I feel the same way about what’s happening now. I didn’t start the fight and neither did any of those on our side who I respect. We’re all pretty much folks who’d prefer to be left alone so we can write out books. But the other side decided we were evil and needed to be put in our places. We put up with the name-calling and virtual shoving until we could ignore it no longer. Now we are standing up for ourselves and pushing back and they don’t like it.
      Too bad. This is one instance where the bullies aren’t going to win.

      1. When my daughter started Krav Maga I explained the three rules:
        1) Never hit first.
        2) Always hit back.
        3) If you knock them out you get ice cream.

        It helps a lot that we “home school”, so most of the kids she deals with are raised better. Most of them.

        1. You forgot the most important rule

          4)If they go down make SURE they don’t get back up.

      2. I would just barely disagree. IMAO, Larry Correia invited a fight with the Hugo list because 1) he knew it would happen and 2) I think he thought it was time for that fight. There is a good chance I’m putting words into his mouth and if so I apologize.

        1. I’m pretty sure he also did it because he thought it would be fun. While I’m not going to search for any of the examples, I’m quite certain I’ve read more than one comment by him to the effect that he greatly enjoys a vigorous, online exchange with his detractors.

          1. IIRC he likes having vigorous online exchanges that are intelligent and well constructed regardless of which side they come from and he likes thumping idiots. (All my words, not his.)

            1. It’s always good to have a happy warrior on your side– (from experience) Now if he gets unhappy, head down and hide. Don’t look up until the carnage is over. 😉

    2. I don’t know if the bones in my hand will last that long.

      May I use a sap?

            2. Ohhhh, very nice! Yes, don’t use your fists unless you’ve been trained how to. Use an elbow, or a knee. Or be human, and use a tool, though I highly recommend being up on the local regulations regarding assault and battery. Of course, not hitting first should take care of that. Also, “I was afraid for my life, officer.”

              1. Molitur manus imposuit? One of those funny legal terms, the latin of which means “a gentle laying on of hands” or something like, if I recall correctly. Legally, means you used no more force than necessary to remove the offender from your property.

                Of course, “gently” and “shotgun” generally most often go together in a sentence concerning trigger control… (tongue in cheek)

                1. “Of course, “gently” and “shotgun” generally most often go together in a sentence concerning trigger control… (tongue in cheek)”

                  Or used to, no they make those “gentle”, reduced recoil loads.

                  1. Hrm. Might have to recommend that to a cousin of mine. She’s a wee little thing, not even a hundred pounds dripping wet. Reduced recoil may help tighten up those groups. *chuckle*

  6. No, no, no. The Left is on the side of freedom and individuality, while the Right is authoritarian and controlling.

    And if you dare say otherwise, the Left will utterly, ruthlessly destroy you and everyone who care about.

    1. IMO these morons will be very disappointed when the “Revolution Comes” because they *won’t* be in control. [Very Big Evil Grin]

      1. Reality disconnect: They keep cheering the advent of the Revolution, yet never bother to notice who actually has all the weaponry.Apparently they just assume all the guns of government will be on their side — how much of a “revolution” would that be?

          1. Very short, with them revolving quickly and running for cover, where their whines for free health care will give away their hiding places.

            1. Oh, and don’t forget the, “but I’m a victim” that so many will whimper. Then there’s the glitter trail, so easy to follow, especially if the light is just right. VBEG

              2. Oh, and don’t forget the, “but I’m a victim” that so many will whimper.

                To which the reply will be, “Well, if that’s what you really want.”

        3. I figure that anyone who is eager for a civil war, on the grounds that they are sure to win, is probably wrong.

          Those that appreciate the costs and risks aren’t certain to win either, but civil wars are nasty.

          1. I think that’s why Sherman had a mental breakdown at the beginning of the Civil War. He saw what it would cost and it (temporarily) broke him.

            1. Agreed. Poor man – he knew what bloody work was in front of him. The extra horror was that he would be facing friends, kin and West Point classmates.
              And the would be doing their best to kill each other. Civil wars are the bitterest.

              1. If Lee had accepted Lincoln’s offer to head the Union’s armies, how would the Civil War be different?

                2. Probably not very different at all. Lee was a pretty good tactician but not any better of a strategist than McClellan or any other of the top ranking Union generals at the outset of the war. If anything McClellan was a better strategist (McClellan just lacked the final amount of ruthlessness needed).

                  1. I humbly beg to differ with you. Lee was a “great man”, but a lousy wartime leader. He, too, lacked the ruthlessness a commander needs to succeed, only his was expressed differently than McClellan’s was. Lee refused to discipline his subordinates, or demand that they follow his orders. The battle of Gettysburg was largely lost because of that–Had his subordinates actually followed their orders and done what they were supposed to have done, instead of freelancing around the Pennsylvania countryside, Lee likely would have won that battle.

                    I put that same question, “What if Lee stayed with the North…” to an old boss of mine who used to teach history at West Point. His opinion, and I’ve come to agree with him, is that there were two key factors to the North winning the war: One, Jefferson Davis, and the other was Lee. Lee’s defects as a commander and decision-maker are masked by the great charisma he had, and the love he was able to engender in is subordinates. As far as skill at command? He knew what to do, and when to do it, but he couldn’t bring himself to discipline his subordinate leaders to make them do it. Stuart should have been there at Gettysburg to conduct the screening and reconnaissance operations that would have revealed the Union’s strength in the area. That they weren’t is down solely to the indulgent manner in which Lee ran his army. It was like he was a favorite uncle, or something–He’d issue orders, and they’d get followed only if his subordinates agreed with him, and then when they didn’t do what they were supposed to, there were no consequences–Lee even accepted blame for Stuart’s haring around looting, despite having clearly laid out the responsibilities of Stuart’s command before they started the campaign.

                    Lee–Nice guy, but a totally ineffective leader. Had he stayed with the North, more than likely he’d have been given command in the beginning, and that would have led to the same damn thing happening to the Northern armies that happened to the South.

                    Strategically, they were all a bunch of boobs, particularly Lee. Had they gone with a strategy of defense from the beginning of the war, and forced the North to come to them, the Confederacy would likely still exist today. As it was, the adventurism into Northern territory led to the deaths of thousands of irreplaceable Southern soldiers, and the expenditure of most of the South’s warmaking capacity on utterly senseless campaigns and battles. You want the truth of why the South lost, aside from the economic issues? Lee’s charismatic, go-for-glory leadership. Along with the rest of the glory-seeking dumbasses that were his comrades.

                    2. It is a mistake to judge the outcome of the late great unpleasantness on the abilities of the generals and their armies.

                      At the commencement the south seriously lacked in manufacturing capabilities. The economy was primarily agricultural and was highly dependent on export of raw goods and import of finished. At the beginning of the war there was only one major ironworks in the entire south, Tredegar in Richmond. Throughout the war the raw materials and labor became steadily scarcer. Once a blockade was up the south was suffering a not so slow strangulation and with the fall of Vicksburg it was doomed.

                      I gather, from family members who have had the experience, that if you ever have an opportunity to listen in when Col. Kratman is in the mood to wax poetic on the subject you are in for a treat.

                    3. I don’t think I agree with your overall conclusions. While many of your comments about Lee are correct, I think you underrate Lee’s operational skills. I just don’t think he was any worse than any other early war Union general before Grant emerges and pulls a better team up with him.

                    4. I won’t argue with many of your comments on Lee. But I will point out that the South was the rebel faction. Rebel leaders ALWAYS have to depend on charismatic leadership and looser discipline. You are rebelling against the status quo, you automatically don’t have the institutional authority of a long established government/military. You can’t enforce as strict a discipline as a well established institution with a tradition of strict adherence to a command structure. You have to lead a great deal by charisma, and the stronger that charisma is, the stricter your discipline can be, and the tighter your subordinates adherence to orders will be. But you have to realize that you and all your subordinates are rebelling, because they don’t agree with the old establishment; if they disagree with you they will follow you only if you can convince them that is the best thing to do. They are already rebelling against one establishment that failed to convince them it was right, and then attempted to force them, if you attempt to force them to obey orders they don’t agree with, they will rebel against you much easier than they rebelled against the original establishment.

    2. LOL, so true. Except that they will try to destroy us. What they don’t get is we’re tired of being walked all over and are now fighting back — and that scares the crap out of them.

      1. I’m reminded of a line from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

        “Humans don’t fight back. HUMANS DON’T FIGHT BACK!! THAT’S HOW THIS WORKS!!!“

        1. I really, really love those stories. Some sort of bully (or a group of them) who has gotten very used to the idea that the worst he can expect from his victims is pleading – or that ineffectual beating on his shoulders with her fists you see in old movies when the villain forces himself on the heroine – thinks he/she/it is seeing an easy victim (or a group of them). And then finds otherwise. 😀

          What the TV tropes calls ‘Mugging the Monster’ is perhaps the most fun variety – when the intended victim turns out to be something who has no problems wiping the floor with the bully – but all of them work.

          1. A fun twist on that would be to see the old classic, as you described: Man holding woman by the upper arms as she ineffectually beats on his shoulders, telling him to stop, but then she (quite literally) says, “Oh, f$ck it,” and shoves her thumbs in his eyes.

  7. You know, when I think of Cora Buhlert’s name, I have this strange mental image of horses neighing in horror, as they did in the movie Young Frankenstein, whenever Frau Blucher’s name was mentioned …

    1. Thankfully, I didn’t have anything in my mouth when I read your comment, Celia. And yes, I have the same image in my mind.

      4. …and now it’s stuck in my head.

        Maybe she’ll sue that person for definition of character. 😉

  8. Sounds like a bunch of fluffheads and I am also bored with them. On the good side, I now know there colors, which means I can avoid their books more easily and there are less books being thrown against the wall (well, since I use a kindle now, I am not throwing it against the wall for that price).

    2. Cyn, you are insulting fluffheads the world over, but I know what you mean. And yeah, the number of books going against the far wall has been drastically decreased since most of my reading is done on my kindle these days.

      1. lol – oh yea the chick fluffheads are demanding equal rights to the GHHs of the world. I wouldn’t insult other animals that way, of course.

        1. Ah, but the pleasure of hitting ‘delete’ and watching it disappear into the ether is more fun than having to find the spackle.

  9. Hmm. Ringo and Hoyt sometimes strike me as to the left.

    Whether I read a person is often separate from the question of what kind of political ally they are. Someone who requires their political allies pass a purity test 100% is likely to be ineffective, and have few, if any, political allies.

      1. It’s all about perspective. From where I sit Rush Limbaugh is a big government progressive.

        2. When I lived in Connecticut the local Republicans considered me to be a far right radical. Then I moved to Texas and was thought to be a pinko :>) Now that I am in Colorado I am considered an average conservative.

          1. I’m not a conservative. I’m a minarchist libertarian. But since Libertarian compasses everything from tea party to occupy wall street…. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you 😉

              1. I don’t know. So far I have issues with 1, strong issues with 2, issues with three, some issues with five… and that’s as far as I’ve read.

                1. “So far I have issues with 1, strong issues with 2”

                  It seems to me that 2 is merely a restatement of the words of the Declaration:

                  “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shown, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.”

                  1. Try reading it like you’re paranoid about it being abused, and come from a different cultural background.

                    There’s a big difference between what comes across when you’re trying to read something charitably, with an eye to what they meant, and with an eye to how it could be abused. (I think we’ve had a decent number of blow-ups here about who is being sufficiently paranoid about word-twisting!)

                  2. The reason I have issues with 2 is that I come from a society where “the way we do things” has become fossilized to such an extent it collides with modern technology.
                    not government, but society.

                    1. It seems to me that the experience of the society you came from supports the concluding sentence of the statement:

                      Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.

                    3. Sarah,

                      Tech’s greatness lies in it’s ability to be able to shine a light on socialism’s/statism’s flaws. They can nolonger get away with saying don’t payatension to the man behind the curtain.

                      Where once odds or those of like mind could be keept seperate that is no longer the case, and this makes me 😀 .

                    4. CACS,

                      “Battered Wife”

                      Change is scary. What if we make it worse by doing something? Better do nothing. This sucks but is survivable. An individual or society might even come to believe they deserve what is happening to them. We need these controls because we can’t be trusted (burka to drug laws).

                      Bullies to Tyrants only difference is a mater of scale.

              2. Okay, I’m fine with sixth, seventh, eighth, nine and ten. I could explain my issues with the first five, but mostly they make me think too much of the society I came from.

              3. Occupy was almost purely big-government anarchists, aka, useful idiots.

            3. Anyone who acknowledges the gods of the Copybook Headings is at least partly conservative. The Libertarians who think a minarchist state would be a perfect utopia do not acknowledge them.

              1. Been a while, come to think of it. . . .

                As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
                I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
                Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
                And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

                We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
                That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
                But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
                So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

                We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
                Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
                But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
                That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

                With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
                They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
                They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
                So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

                When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
                They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
                But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
                And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

                On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
                (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
                Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
                And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

                In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
                By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
                But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
                And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

                Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
                And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
                That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
                And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

                As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
                There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
                That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
                And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

                And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
                When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
                As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
                The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

              2. Yeah.

                There are almost certainly leftists who think that, say, Eric Flint is a right wing extremist.

                There are leftists who are squeamish about murdering people, outright stealing elections, and helping an outside country bring in an occupation force. That means that to some extent they are allies on those issues. To what extent their other values offset this varies on an individual basis.

                Anyone who has kids, raises them responsibly, and doesn’t molest them is at least a little bit socially conservative. This is also the recipe for having an impact on the future. There are some leftists who fit this description.

                1. There are almost certainly leftists who think that, say, Eric Flint is a right wing extremist.

                  Seattle has enough of them that a former friend is quite sure that HE is “far right,” because he thinks Obama is middle of the road rather than far RIGHT.

                  Most of his friends (computer school, focus on graphics, some former military) all think Obama is a right-winger.

                  Portland also has enough to support a radio station where I’ve heard them explain O’s a right winger because Obamacare wasn’t single payer.

                2. Right wing communist, is the way I have heard Flint described… yes that pounding sound you hear is my head bouncing on the desk.

                1. That was yesterday — so this is today:

                  The Three-Decker
                  by Rudyard Kipling

                  “The three-volume novel is extinct.”

                  Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.
                  It took a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
                  But, spite all modern notions, I’ve found her first and best –
                  The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.

                  Fair held the breeze behind us – ‘twas warm with lover’s prayers,
                  We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs.
                  They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,
                  And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.

                  By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook,
                  Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took
                  With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed,
                  And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest.

                  We asked no social questions – we pumped no hidden shame –
                  We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came:
                  We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell.
                  We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but – Zuleika didn’t tell.

                  No moral doubts assailed us, so when the port we neared,
                  The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.
                  ‘Twas fiddle in the foc’s’le – ‘twas garlands on the mast,
                  For every one was married, and I went at shore at last.

                  I left ‘em all in couples a-kissing on the decks.
                  I left the lovers loving and parents signing cheques.
                  In endless English comfort, by county-folk caressed,
                  I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! . . .

                  That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again
                  Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
                  They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise,
                  In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.

                  Swing round your aching searchlight – ‘twill show no haven’s peace.
                  Ay, blow your shrieking sirens at the deaf, grey-bearded seas!
                  Boom our the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest –
                  And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest.

                  But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail,
                  At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,
                  Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,
                  You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.

                  You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread;
                  You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ‘neath her leaping figure-head;
                  While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine
                  Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine!

                  Hull down – hull down and under – she dwindles to a speck,
                  With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck.
                  All’s well – all’s well aboard her – she’s left you far behind,
                  With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind.

                  Her crews are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make?
                  You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake?
                  Well, tinker up your engines – you know your business best –
                  She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!

                    1. “The Three-Decker” is, however, especially relevant to any gathering of Human Wave writers with its exultation in the tropes they like to read, not the “Truth and Science” ones.

              3. “Fools to the left of me, feeders to the right… I need to find a REAL job.” -Londo Mollari

          2. Though I promise nothing as menopause progresses and our aristos get worse. If I thought we could have a nice French revolution without the dread virus of absolute equality (as opposed to equality under the law) infecting it, I’d be all for it.

          3. Ray,

            Ferran, from AL. Give my regards to people next weekend, will you? Can’t make it and I’ve been a tad off.

  10. I don’t know about you but when I was growing up, my parents taught me not to bow down to bullies.

    So, can we say that the people on this site agree with this statement?

    So, can we agree, therefore, that the tactics of the left, where you avoid discussing the merits of an argument or idea, but instead attack the person presenting the idea, even to the point of making up obvious, bald faced lies about them and then attacking them as if they were true, are wrong?

    And if we see such tactics used here, would remaining silent be complicit agreement or simply cowardice?

    We would never do that here, would we?

    Would we?

    1. If you’ve got something to say, say it, don’t just snidely insinuate it. Passive-aggressive comments like the above make me think the speaker is someone who doesn’t have the courage to stand his ground and speak his piece like a grown man. (Or grown woman, depending.)

      2. Argue ideas? Sure. Argue vague piles of mush (as have appeared from time to time over the years)? Not really. Argue ad hominem? Nah, because that brings down the ban hammer, which hurts a lot more than even the best flung carp.

        1. “Argue” has two points on a spectrum:

          1) Discuss a position from oppositional points of view.

          2) Fight over something.

          I’ve given up #2. If you don’t want to have a discussion we’re either not going to interact at all, or if you INSIST on your position, but won’t be civil, well, people make choices and there are always consequences, now aren’t there?

          1. Yes, there are consequences, because this happens to be a rather real-world place, for a blog. Which may be what so upsets some of the drive-by commentariat.

      3. If you’ve got something to say, say it, don’t just snidely insinuate it.

        What I was doing was asking a question, that is why I included these things (?) in the post rather frequently. It is an attempt to get people to think, to ask “are we doing this here?”. So, lets look at actual examples:

        What we are looking for is So, can we agree, therefore, that the tactics of the left, where you avoid discussing the merits of an argument or idea, but instead attack the person presenting the idea, now, do we see that right in this very thread, or is this merely “snidely insinuate it”?

        Nah, Legatus has been by before. He lacks Fail’s integrity and charm.
        So, I am accused of lacking integrity and charm. Is that discussing the merits of my idea, or instead attacking the person presenting the idea? You will note that that sentence was the entirety of the post, ideas were not even mentioned.

        Oh, so just a general loser troll rather than an epic one?
        So, calling someone either a “general loser troll” or “an epic one” is not attacking the person rather than the idea? Once again, nothing about the idea, simply name calling.

        Note that I am actually asking these questions, about these specific posts, what is your answer? I am not asking it because I am all butthurt or anything, I want you to actually look at the above posts, and answer the question. And, in so doing, have to ask the question yourself, and think about the answer.

        *innocence*
        😈

        To sorta quote a fav line from a movie:
        “Now, I understand that you boys were just having fun, but my mule, he just doesn’t get it, he gets the crazy idea your laughing at him.

        If you attack the person, rather than the idea, even “in fun”, well, you are attacking the person, and you will get a lot of heat, but very little light. And this is true regardless of the merit of the original idea, the idea can be the mostest stupidist ignert idea in the world, but if you attack the person rather than the idea, you are attacking the person. My question is, should you be doing that? My question is, is saying that the PC types do that, and that they are wrong to do that, and then doing it yourself, honest?

        Prior to the bloody Terror of ’93, in the Republic of Letters there was, from 1765 to 1780, a dry terror of which the Encyclopedia was the Committee of Public Safety and d’Alembert was the Robespierre. It mowed down reputations as the other chopped off heads: its guillotine was defamation, “infamy” as it was then called: The term, originating with Voltaire [écrasez l’infâme!], was used in the provincial societies with legal precision. “To brand with infamy” was a well-defined operation consisting of investigation, discussion, judgment, and finally execution, which meant the public sentence of “contempt.”

        1. What I was doing was asking a question …

          No, what you were doing was classic passive-aggressive “make an accusation without actually coming out and saying so, thus providing plausible deniability later.” The next step in that classic tactic is “Oh, I was just asking a question,” which you have just done. So far you are not impressing me as someone who wants an actual honest discussion of ideas.

          And see, that’s the key concept: an actual honest discussion of ideas. Those who demonstrate by their behavior that they do not want to engage in such a thing are labeled trolls, and either ignored or driven away, depending on the tolerance of the blog owner and/or general commentariat.

          The whole “don’t attack the messenger because of the message” idea has a limited scope. It applies to those seeking out honest debate, and if such a person has their character attacked rather than their ideas, then the person doing the attacking is in the wrong. I’m quite happy to agree with you on that score. But if you try to apply the same tactics to trolls, you’d play right into their hands. Trolls thrive on people not calling them out for what they’re doing, and instead trying to engage them in a debate of ideas. Because the troll never answers the people debating his ideas — he never acknowledges that a counter-argument has been made, let alone give it the benefit of a counter-counter-argument. He instead moves on to throw his next rhetorial bomb. Pretty soon the whole thread is filled with people trying to debate someone who’s unwilling to answer their points, and nobody is talking about anything else any longer — precisely what the troll was hoping to achieve.

          Because this tactic exists, the “don’t attack the messenger because of the message” idea cannot be applied to everybody. If someone is acting like a sane debater, then you should debate him. But if someone is acting like a troll, you should apply a totally different set of tactics — shame him, mock him, and then ignore him — otherwise you hand the reins of the comment thread over to the person who is acting with malicious intent to derail it.

          What you are seeing is that most people have decided that you’re a troll rather than someone interested in honest debate, based on your behavior when you first showed up. Personally, I’m still willing to grant you the benefit of the doubt, if you’ll start acting like someone who really wants debate. But that means honestly acknowledging your own part in miscommunication, rather than saying “My post was perfectly clear, and cannot possibly have been misunderstood, and therefore these people who claim that I said X when I really meant Y are simply making up obvious, bald faced lies about me.” No, they weren’t: they were honestly misunderstanding your post. Doubling down on the insults (“obvious, bald faced lies”) does nothing to help clear up the misunderstanding — but a troll uses exactly that sort of tactic.

          This is why you’re getting insults in this thread, Legatus. It’s because most people here believe that you’re a troll uninterested in honest debate, and should therefore not be engaged in said debate, because that’s the correct tactic to use with a troll. If you want to be treated like an honest debater, a good first step would be to show some humility, apologize for your share in any previous misunderstandings, and pledge to try harder next time to avoid such misunderstandings rather than assume bad faith (“obvious, bald faced lies”) on the part of your opposite numbers.

          I hope that you can indeed prove to us that you’re interested in honest debate, and not just showing up to act like a troll. It’s up to you.

          1. Eventually I learned to stop arguing with a guy on a forum when I noticed that all too often the discussion would evolve from discussing any actual ideas, and turn into a debate about what he did or didn’t really say – often with lots of self-quotations thrown about (he liked to cite his months old posts as if they were unassailable reference material everyone should be conversant with). And yet with all this self-ego stroking, clear and understandable ideas were never forthcoming.

            1. And that’s part of the issue. Was he accusing us of just calling the SJW’s names? Well, sure, but it’s the name they call themselves. They think being a social justice warrior is GREAT. (We don’t call ourselves fascists nor do most of us subscribe to fascisti ideas.)
              Other than that, what was his insanity, exactly? No clue.

                1. I am only able to respond and post irregularly, that is all. Do people always ascribe bad motives so quickly here?

                    1. Fer instance:

                      I’m gonna point out that of the posts thrown up in your absence you chose this one to respond to.

                      Like last time, you choose to respond to those posts that let you claim yourself as the disadvantaged one.

                      It bores. Try something different.

                  3. That depends? Do you consider going “poof” (meaning, not here anymore for whatever reason) a moral failing of some sort?

                    If so, it’s more telling of you than us.

              2. I am merely saying that people here act in the same manner, bullying, name calling, labeling as something bad, that the PC do. The idea is, can you blame them for it if you do it regularly yourself?

                1. Legatus,

                  You asking people to see and examine their own blindspots, if people can do this then they are not blindspots.

                  Is there a technique you find helpful in a complishing this task of self-examination? Of are you just going to damned that this be done, and if it’s not condemn the group as being uninlightened.

                  Condescend much.

                  Trust me I know from experiance. It does you no good and is wast of time if you offend the people you are trying to communicate with.

                  P.S. You might find of some interest a Book by Rory Miller called “Conflict Communication”

                2. I am merely saying that people here act in the same manner, bullying, name calling, labeling as something bad, that the PC do.

                  Now you are ADMITTING you lied when you made the original passive aggressive swipe.

                  You’re also factually wrong, and attempting to base an argument on “…but these bad people do it!”

                3. I am merely saying that people here act in the same manner, bullying, name calling, labeling as something bad, that the PC do. The idea is, can you blame them for it if you do it regularly yourself?

                  No, you did not merely say anything. Try and learn to say what you actually mean in the first place.

                  Let him who is without sin cast the first stone? I suggest you look in the mirror.

                4. *yawn*

                  IOW, you’re using the “tu quoque” cry and pretending it means something?

                  How shocking. I’m utterly underwhelmed with surprise that you’d try that.

          2. If you want to be treated like an honest debater, a good first step would be to show some humility, apologize for your share in any previous misunderstandings

            Been there, done that see here https://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/06/21/lenins-statue-is-tumbling-down/#comment-180307 , Its all there, I badly worded one or two of the first sentences of that first, original post which could make people believe something exactly the opposite of what I in a few later sentences of that post explicitly stated. I failed to save the post to HD, and thought I had worded and formatted it differently, which colored my later posts. I wont go into it here, off topic, I went into it in considerable detail there. Just click the link, I went into it line by line, more or less, which will give you the topic it was about.

            So, since I have already done that, what were you saying again? And This is why you’re getting insults in this thread, why, exactly? And insults without content, without addressing the merits of the idea presented, are exactly the idea of my post here. Should you, after deciding that someone is a troll, possibly falsely, decide from then on that any idea they present is automatically wrong? If the idea is not, itself, trollish, should you attach a prejudice to that idea if you believe, in this case based in limited evidence, that the person is a troll (as compared to someone who has repeatedly shown trollish behavior in many posts, IE that all their ideas are trolling, designed merely to stir up trouble)?

            And is a person labeled a troll if their ideas merely disagree with yours? Should you not ask yourself that question before leaping immediately to the insulting? (Note, I am not trying to imply that you always do, merely saying you should ask yourself that question each time.) Is the idea presented judged by your belief in the person posting it’s character, or by the idea itself? Or, in other words, you read the idea, are you judging it by the merits of the idea, or by your preconceived impression about the merits of the poster? (Note, if the person has a long history of posts simply to stir up trouble, that is another thing.)

            In other words, just how quick are you to apply the label “troll” and start immediately into the insulting? And doesn’t that look exactly like the bullying in the post above?

            And I have met trolls, real ones, before. I do not resort to direct insults (uh, usually…*innocent look*), I prefer to simply whip out the ‘ol trollhammer and squash their idea flat, which is generally pretty easy. That way, I avoid any possible mistake about their trollishness, their personal character, on my part.

            1. Legatus, I don’t have Robin Munn’s patience (remarkable, that man) and after last time I’m not as forgiving.

              Your statement in this thread amounts to a passive-agressive condemnation of members of the community, without you having taken the time to establish yourself within the community. Your response is a put-upon pout.

              You don’t have the chops to play Socrates and you haven’t established the credentials to lecture this community. There are some wickedly bright and exceedingly well educated people here (not me), some of whom have taken the time to respond to you. Listen to them.

              If you want to comment here and be taken seriously, take a position and defend it. Expect people to assail it. Don’t beg-off when they do, defend your position. Win, lose or draw establish that you are taking the arguments into account and responding to them as you understand them. Don’t pull the bully BS, there are dangerous things in the wilds and they chase weakness.

              In short, it’s on you to prove you’re not a troll at this point and if that’s your goal — you’re doing it wrong.

              1. If you want to comment here and be taken seriously, take a position and defend it.

                Before I can take any position here on anything, I first have to establish whether I will even be allowed to defend it, whether it will even be mentioned or discussed, rather than just personal, off topic attacks. We first have to see if being taken seriously is even something that happens here. We first have to establish a baseline. That is what I am doing, first seeing if it is even possible to take a position here and be allowed to defend it. This is especially true if I am ever to take a position which others may disagree with, will they discuss that disagreement, or simply go all trollish with personal and off topic attacks?

                My position right here was simple and obvious, as stated in the text, do you believe in the post by Amanda Green above, not to bow down to bullies, and does that mean you will, or will not, act in the same manner as the bullies, the PC crowd? The response was an obvious NO, the responses included many that were simply and solely personal attacks without substance or any reference to my position or even any position at all.

                Second, I took a position here, some people immediately, many instantly, ascribed motives to me personally that are not in the text, and then attacked me for the perceived motives rather than the idea stated in the text. Since the position was not attacked, how can I defend that position? In fact, that is EXACTLY what I was asking for, attack the position, not the person. In fact, if I hold a wrong position, and you can prove it, I would welcome that, as i would then come to a right position. You do, however, have to prove your right position, and mere personal attacks do nothing to advance your position or prove it in any way. Quite the opposite, in fact.

                Of course, to do that, you have to, like, actually mention a position.

                I will simply mention my position: people here make far too many personal attacks far to quickly, and assume trolldom far to quickly. By doing so, they elicit a response that is angry, and thus troll-like, and it is a self fulfilling prophecy.

                Your statement in this thread amounts to a passive-aggressive condemnation of members of the community, without you having taken the time to establish yourself within the community.
                Do I need to “establish myself” before I can state an observed and easily proven truth? Is anyone who posts here for the first time automatically assumed to be a troll? Exactly how would one “establish” oneself anyway? Why would one need to, can’t the text of the post stand for itself?

                By “observed and easily proven truth” see this again:
                *Nah, Legatus has been by before. He lacks Fail’s integrity and charm.
                *Oh, so just a general loser troll rather than an epic one?
                So, instead of “a passive-aggressive condemnation of members of the community”, how about a straight out pure aggressive condemnation for hypocrisy, where a post by Amanda Green about bullying from the left is shown, in no uncertain terms, to be also true about members of this community who are thus proven to use the same tactics? See, i first observed here for a while, and noticed that personal attacks, often way off topic of any idea stated, basically trollish tactics, are often used. I then made a post, since the post by Amanda Green condemned the idea of personal attacks (“bullying”), in which, rather than going all out accusation, merely asked if you believed that post, and plan to practice what you preach. I pointed out possible ways in which you were not, having observed them. I was being polite, rather than full on accusing, which i could well have been, as observed by the two example posts above just in this one small part of this one thread alone. Do you want me to go full out aggressive? Do you want me to act and think like a troll? Will attacking me personally in the manner of a troll likely lead to me being more or less polite, more or less rational, more or less likely to attack back personally and thus go wildly off topic exactly like a troll? What exactly do you hope to accomplish? Have you thought about it? Do you want me to be a troll?

                From what I see, many (not all) people here have gone all tribal. Anyone who says any regular here has an idea that is wrong or is doing wrong (in methods of posting, as here) is to be attacked, by any means possible, on topic or off. It is thus impossible to disagree with you and have the disagreement rationally discussed. This appears true even if I can, and have, even in this post, proven my point (see the * above). It is thus impossible to disagree with you, and if I already agree with you, why post? Nothing to discuss here, move along.

                Do you believe in the post by Amanda Green above, or not?

                Prove it.

                (This post is not to construe that you cannot jump on well known trolls making obvious troll posts. By well known I mean ones who have done so repeatedly, and shown by their responses to rational discussion of the idea presented that they do not wish rational discussion. However…if someone you only believe is a troll makes what seems like a rational point, however much you disagree with it, you might try something new. Try, once, to discuss the idea rationally. It may be that they are not so trollish as they seem, they are simply responding to your personal attacks the way anyone would. If they refuse rational discussion, however, then they are proven just a troll. To do that, however, you have to be able to tell the difference between your own rational disagreement and your own simple desire to always be right (irrational, emotional disagreement.

                In other words, try it without the personal attacks, just once, and see what happens.

                Don’t overdo it, however, some of them really are just trolls.)

                1. “Before I can take any position here on anything, I first have to establish whether I will even be allowed to defend it,”

                  The proof the pudding is in the eating. There is only one way for you to establish that, and it starts with your taking a position.

                2. Could it be, perhaps, that you never actually took a position? All I saw in your original post besides the quote from Amanda was a bunch of questions that could be considered to be passive/aggressive and then you went silent. I have seen this as a tactic that trolls take so I am not surprised that people reacted negatively. IMAO there is a large difference between asking a question and stating a position:

                  It is wrong that Sarah has never thrown a carp at me.
                  vs,
                  Is it fair that Sarah only appears to throw carp at old timers but has never thrown a carp at me?

                  As for a newbie having to agree with everyone here, I don’t believe that to be true. There have been some interesting discussion where people have gotten very heated but eventually agreed to disagree (with one notable exception). I am pretty sure that I could say something about our hostess or anyone else on this blog and as long as I could back it up or I asserted it was a defenseable position I wouldn’t be banned.

                  1. Legatus – Heaven knows, some of us here have a hard time communicating effectively. Did you, perhaps, not understand that your first comment on this thread matched the form used by those who try to accuse people without appearing to accuse?

                    If so, then please understand that that is what it sounded like.

                    Let me sum up your original statement, as it appeared to people who have seen the same thing before:

                    “You claim that the Left attacks the person without addressing the ideas they present, yet you do the same thing to them, so how are you better than them?”

                    This is then followed up with the snide-appearing (especially with the bolded emphasis used):

                    “We would never do that here, would we?

                    Would we?”

                    This creates the implication that you are being smugly sarcastic in your implications that the people who have been caught in your backhanded accusation are hypocrites of the highest order, which tends to piss people off.

                    If this is not what you intended to imply, then simply state that you didn’t realize that was what it sounded like, back up, and try again. If it WAS what you meant, then state it as a direct opinion, not some backhanded, wishy-washy, smug, sarcastic and snide remark.

                    1. I was being polite. I did not think it was good to just come in here as a newish poster with a direct accusation. Having seen how people react to both myself and others, see here https://accordingtohoyt.com/2014/07/10/the-failings-of-experts/#comment-183330 ,however, perhaps I was wrong. How people here treated that fellow made me ANGRY.

                      I got over it, in time to post a more polite post. I asked questions to get people to think, rather than direct accusations. The reaction is now making me angry again. reading the above post that I linked here is what made me angry.

                      Now, my original post, on a different thread a while back, was badly worded, so I was willing to accept a bit of thumping (although the thumping was over the top). However, then I saw the above post. The only thing “wrong” with that guys post is that people here disagreed with it. And then came the name calling and personal attacks, to which he did not respond in kind.

                      You want me to just come out and call hypocrite?

                      HYPOCRITE!

                      Feel better now?

                      And if I had posted that originally, what do you suppose the reaction would be?

                      If you click on that post, and see how he was reacted to, it should, if you are any kind of decent human being, make you angry to.

                      And while I will agree that the personal attack on him were fairly mild, compared to other attacks here I have seen, they were still completely uncalled for, because they were merely personal attacks.
                      And I did see those other attacks., on other people.
                      They were trollish.
                      They were hypocritical.

                      After seeing these, why would any sane, rational, polite person want to post here? Do any post here? (Note, some seem at least polite, however, they put up with impoliteness and even applaud it, and are thus guilty.)

                      And if, in the future, I see a post I would like to reply to, can I expect a polite, rational discussion of the idea? I doubt it. I have shown the evidence of that, cut and paste and link, there is no doubt.

                      I posted here pointing out what i saw, in question form, in the hopes that people would ask themselves those same questions, and perhaps this might become a decent place after all.

                      I now only have the faintest of hopes of that.

                      Prove me wrong.

                      And if I choose to make another post on another subject someday, and I am responded to with personal attacks, illogic, off topic trollishness, and the like, I will call you on it. That’s what you want, that’s what you get. Treat you as you deserve. And if some respond on topic and politely, you also will be responded to in kind, even if you disagree (perhaps especially if you disagree and convince me of something I did not know or was wrong about). You also will be treated as you deserve.

                    2. No, that wasn’t polite. It was passive aggressive crap.

                      I find it funny though that Fail starts his stuff, gets nuked, storms off in a huff, then we got NoWayerMan who suddenly shows up to inform us of the error of our ways, continually ignoring people informing him of the history with Fail, who then goes away. Now, we have Legatus here to school we mere mortals on our failings as individuals.

                      Read the replies from Sarah since you posted earlier today. I’d take that as a warning if I were you. Go away and annoy someone else. As trolls go (and yes, you most certainly are a troll), you’re rather pathetic at it.

                    3. Legatus, amend your own trollish behavior or you are doubly guilty of what you accuse them of. You say they are ranting about trolls then acting like them, yet you come in her and act like a troll and are shocked at being treated like one.

                      I have been a witness to both of your forays into this venue, and you have not expressed yourself as you claim to intend at any point in time. Right now you’re playing very holier than thou, again, what you are accusing others of.

                      If you want my analysis of this, as someone who is also very new to this community and has been quietly reading for some time. If you are genuinely trying to understand rather than simply looking for targets and a way to pat yourself on the back, (I don’t know, current results are inconclusive, though you are supplying more and more data, and little of it in your favor, though some is, which is why I’m typing this up.) here is my analysis.

                      Going back a ways. Discussion here is lively. If you’ve never seen two good ol’ boys at the point of pounding on each other over an issue you can’t follow much less understand, then drinking together an hour later like lost soul mates when you could have SWORN they were going to kill each other dead at least twice over, you’re going to have a rough time here. It’s going to be massive culture shock. I think this is an element of what’s happening with you and our stubborn and unobservant attempted good Samaritan yesterday. (Benefit of the doubt in his case. The linguistic patterns didn’t match for him to be a Fail clone, and I don’t think Fail is that good an actor.)

                      Most of the people here are very intelligent, and I say ‘most’ because I haven’t observed everyone and absolutes in language make me twitchy. Probably the scientist in me. Those lively debates get hard to follow sometimes because if you come in the middle you’ve missed 3 or 4 major references, probably some literary asides, possibly some deep physics or philosophy, and very likely a chunk of backstory. This means jumping in gets tricky especially if you let yourself believe that you fully understand everyone’s stance on the topic. It’s easy to miss something and if you’re not willing to take correction and read EVERYTHING that has been said you’re going to step on toes.

                      Since February of this year (at least, that’s when I drifted in here to lurk. I’ve seen bits and pieces from older posts but haven’t extensively hunted backwards enough to extrapolate trends) this community has been under almost constant assault by the people listed in the above article. If you don’t know what that means, psychologically, corner a vixen and see how many stitches you need after she gets through with you, even if you didn’t mean to hurt her.

                      This site, the Mad Genius Club, and Larry Correia’s blog have a great deal of overlap in readership. Issues and history with individuals will often migrate back and forth. There are a few others that seem to play in but those three are the main that I have found. Unless you follow all three, you may miss a critical piece of backstory, which, again, will bite you if you jump into an argument thinking you fully understand it.

                      I have seen Fail Burton dominantly here and on Mr. Correia’s blog. In both places, he frequently pops up with very similar rants (that seemed to be along the lines of either ‘intersectionalist conspiracy’ and ‘tasteless heathens how dare you like that!’). All of them paranoid, and they have become increasingly so, and increasingly malicious since I started following these communities. He has also become less and less cautious about who he attacks and why. There were several tangles across the sites over what seemed to be very minor things (expressing enjoyment of a particular artist where Fail Burton dismissed the artist because he wasn’t Boris Vellejo or Frank Franzetta, and because he considered realism to be lacking in creativity.) He became very strident on these issues. His preferred mode is to begin laying down ‘the way things are’ then immediately mock when contradicted. (By the by, his Wiscon sketches finally got so over the line even Mr. Correia, who usually has a high snark tolerance, asked him to tone it back.) So there are at least two sites worth of history to be considered. I’ve spent 5 months reading through the three sites and am still catching up on all of that history. I recomend you do some digging, the posts are too scattered to provide you with links. Mr. Correia’s blog has a good search engine, and so does this one, so it shouldn’t be too hard to do some digging. I warn you it will be a massive timesink.

                      Brief side note: I loath Fail Burton, he pushes all the wrong buttons pretty much since the first post of his I’ve read. He’s out there paranoid and sends off all the signals I have long identified with fanatics of the dangerous sort. Nothing he has said in any post has contradicted that impression, in fact have only strengthened it. I discovered the other day that I was not alone in that assessment of him. It actually rather surprised me, which should tell you something about how well the others kept their own dislike of him within polite bounds.

                      The explosion over the book covers was classic. As I pointed out to NoWayerMan, and which he seems to have completely ignored. It was Fail that started the name calling. The initial reactions to his advice was that of professionals seeing dangerous advice being propagated. Were there more diplomatic ways of phrasing it? Probably, but preventing further disinformation seemed more important than Fail’s delicate feelings, since they knew those would be hurt anyway. Fail exploded and demanded credentials, which he got by the truck load. He refused to give his own. He whined and moaned when people kept calling him on it. He pitched fits, and every time he pitched fits, tempers got shorter. Finally he got both barrels. (Sooner rather than later in some cases. Some people have itchier trigger fingers than others.)

                      Enter NoWayerMan defending him in much better language but still not addressing any actual points and without even my level of background checking done, which he admitted. He wouldn’t listen when people told him that Fail had been pulling this sort of thing for months so had used up all the good graces available. He did the equivalent of the city dandy chewing out a bunch of Texas boys for beating up the guy who tried to steal their kid sister’s lunch money. The Dandy went down swinging, always protesting that he was the good guy without bothering to check on what was going on.

                      Now, you walk in… having watched the pounding on of the dandy, without knowing more than the dandy and you do the same thing as the dandy only you’re not nearly as well spoken so the swinging starts faster and wonder why you’re getting swung at when you walk into the middle of a fight and start it all over again.

                      If this is a culture with which you are unfamiliar and actually want to engage in discussion. I strongly recommend you take a step back and acknowledge how little you know, first to yourself, then to the others here and proceed with extreme caution. Do not ask questions that are thinnly veiled accusations. Look at everything you write and evaluate it from the culture you are entering. If you are not familiar with formal speech, which tends to be safer, just be cautious. Not passive. But for your first statement, something more along the lines of “I’m trying to get a feel for posting here, and am getting mixed signals, what are the actual limits of behavior?” would have gotten the results you claim you want.

                    4. For a geologist (am I remembering right?) you’re a hail of a cultural archeologist!

                      I’m just gonna stand over here and admire that comment.

                    6. *blushes* I have had a rather mottled career. Yes, I’m currently a geologist. I’ve been a linguist, and intel analyst. And my folks grew up in Korea, so I grew up with a horrible cultural and body language mishmash that I had to consciously sort out, so I tend to be aware of the cultures around me, because none of them are ‘natural’ to me in many ways. I wish I could claim genuine expertise. Just a lot of screwing up and learning the hard way. In the past, I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth as badly as Legatus because I didn’t understand the culture I was stepping on.

                    7. “Sticking one’s foot in one’s mouth” is a very human thing to do (yes, I’ve done it).

                      IMO the measure of a person is “do you realize that you’ve done it” and “how do you handle it after you realize you’ve done it”.

                      Somehow I get the idea that you handled “sticking your foot in your mouth” quite well. [Smile]

                    8. I got there. First one was the worst. It was at Basic Training. Took a little while to sort it out. I’ve been lucky enough to have people there to call me on things when I get stupid before stupid got to be a habit.

                    11. Well said, Miss Heather. That is pretty much my assessment of it, as well.

                      Always good to have another voice of reason in the mix. *grin*

                    15. I’m counting you, Amanda, Kate, our respected host, several others just now. Trying to catch up a bit before sleep snatches me away.

                      It’s nice to have people more eloquent than I that say things I’d like to think I’d have thought of as well. If that makes any sense. *grin*

                    16. Dan, my friend, if you’re counting me as a voice of reason I fear we’re in the dark and dangerous waters.

                      Or you’ve given in to your heritage and have a mason jar full of clear and potent elixir weighing your hand down. If so — share!

                    17. I shoulda known. Dang Texans, always got a nose for good Tennessee Whiskey.

                      *passes bottle*

                    1. I feel that I didn’t really earn that carp but I’ll take it. 🙂

                      I was thinking of calling him Eric.

                    4. In connection with the name “Wanda”, I believe the correct adjective is “Wicked”.

                      3…2…1…

                    6. I have, yes. I was thinking of another Wanda though.

                      Perhaps it’s for the best that no one seems to have recognized my reference:-)

                3. We first have to see if being taken seriously is even something that happens here.

                  What exactly do you hope to accomplish? Have you thought about it?

                  From what I see, many (not all) people here have gone all tribal. Anyone who says any regular here has an idea that is wrong or is doing wrong (in methods of posting, as here) is to be attacked, by any means possible, on topic or off. It is thus impossible to disagree with you and have the disagreement rationally discussed.

                  To do that, however, you have to be able to tell the difference between your own rational disagreement and your own simple desire to always be right…

                  Veiled insults with an assumption of your own (suffering) superiority are not making your case.

                  Have I been mildly insulting and dismissive? Yep. Going way back to your first visit I took the time to respond to you point by point, as did several others. You skipped ’em and went to the ones “attacking” you so you could get your put-upons charged up.

                  Thus, as I said, you lack the charm and integrity of Fail. Fail’s a bit nutty, but he fights. You whine about being “bullied” by people who don’t even know who you are and can have no impact on your real life.

                  Do elbows fly a bit around here? Oh, yeah. I’ve got some cherished bruises and knots. I’ve been knocked on the head by a dragon tail a time or two, and we might as well be aquatic for all the carp flying around.

                  People are going to disagree. As I pointed out in a comment you didn’t respond to. People around here are going to disagree on lots of things. Your silly little dig about arguing with regulars shows how little attention you’ve paid to what goes on in this community. As long as you make a good faith effort to get in the scrum and fight for the ball you’ll probably have some allies. You keep pulling the “bunch of meanies” card out… Meh.

                  Legatus, this group adopted the title of Hoyt’s Huns for the sake of sweet strawberries! And not for the pretty alliteration (that was happy coincidence.)

                  Do I need to “establish myself” before I can state an observed and easily proven truth?

                  If you want to criticize the community? Yes. If you want to lecture the community? Don’t bother. If you want to participate in rousing, aggravating, inspiring, educational, contrary, obscure, historical, fantastical, irritable, ridiculous and vitally important debate? No. Just jump in.

                  But make sure you’re old enough and tough enough for the ride.

                4. Excuse me?

                  You asked: Do I need to “establish myself” before I can state an observed and easily proven truth.

                  This is what you expected this community to do for you: Before I can take any position here on anything, I first have to establish whether I will even be allowed to defend it, whether it will even be mentioned or discussed, rather than just personal, off topic attacks. We first have to see if being taken seriously is even something that happens here. We first have to establish a baseline.

                  To start the discussion with the implication that you do not believe that those with whom you are engaging are going to be polite is, in and of itself, rather rude. You may have thought that all you were doing was the equivalent of surveying the grounds. If it were truly your intention, rather than employing innuendo, you should have said as much in the first place.

                  I have now seen what your bottom line is, and how you engage. I am not impressed. I, for one, have no intention of bowing down to your bullying.

                5. Alright, since this is the second time you’ve quoted my comment below, all without actually addressing me personally like someone who has a set, I’m going do address YOU.

                  *Oh, so just a general loser troll rather than an epic one?

                  Unless you have the reading comprehension of a third grader, you know that while I was asking about you, I wasn’t speaking to you. Even if you do comprehend at a third grade level, you probably noted that as well. I thought you were someone else, a major troll we just dealt with, based on the passive aggressive comments in your original post. Someone indicated that you’d been here before, and a different pain in the butt. Hence, my question. It was for my own clarification. Don’t like it? You could have answered it yourself. Politely. But nope. You use that as “proof” you’re being attacked.

                  Well, here’s a heads up. I haven’t attacked you. Yet. Do not count on the situation to remain as such indefinitely. You’re looking for reasons to feel attacked. You’re giving me plenty of reasons to feel happy to oblige.

                  1. *Oh, so just a general loser troll rather than an epic one?
                    Option 1, “general loser troll”, option 2, “an epic one”.
                    Either way, it comes out to loser or epic troll. There was no third option. So, even if you did not say it directly to me, you called me some kind of troll,, a personal attack, whether directly or indirectly.

                    How, exactly, does one “politely” answer these two, and only two, options? What, exactly, is the question that I could have answered politely?

                    And if not directly to me, can we call that “passive aggressive”? I mean, either way, you call me a troll, whether to my face, or in talking out loud to someone else.

                    1. Are you just stupid, or do you go out of your way to act like a complete idiot?

                      And if not directly to me, can we call that “passive aggressive”? I mean, either way, you call me a troll, whether to my face, or in talking out loud to someone else.

                      Once again, I was asking someone else for clarification on what they said. How is that passive aggressive? Oh yeah, it isn’t. You simply chose to latch onto it. Whatever.

                      All your actions have done is prove my question was even more warranted except for one thing. Calling you a “general loser troll” is a freaking insult to general loser trolls. They’re better at their art than you are.

          3. “Those who demonstrate by their behavior that they do not want to engage in such a thing are labeled trolls”

            Actually around here we often call ’em “chew toys.”

          5. But if you try to apply the same tactics to trolls, you’d play right into their hands.

            But…
            what if they are not a troll, and you immediately attack them as if they were?

            If you ignore their idea, and attack them personally, say, such as ” lacks…integrity and charm”, or “just a general loser troll”, immediately, what response can you expect? Will they get more rational, or less? Might they get angry, and attack back, thus going off topic? So, they were not a troll before, but, because of your hasty attack, they are now. Was that the desired effect?

            And what are trolls like, they don’t desire to have a rational discussion, as you said? (I would agree with that.) So, if you immediately respond with a personal attack that doesn’t even mention any idea that they posted about, are you not also acting as a troll?

            And then the anger flares, and rationality, even if previously intended, goes out the window, the personal attacks flare back and forth, and both sides get trollier and trollier (yes, that’s a word!).

            Everyone joins in, often following each other blindly (poster was said to be a troll, must be true, don’t bother to check it out), and we end up in a big troll melee. Everybody accuses everybody of being a troll, and everybody is now right. Everyone thumps gleefully away and the original idea is simply…forgotten. You wanted a troll, a “chew toy”, you got one.

            Only the original poster was not a troll.

            And now they look at you, and what do they see? Big, green, and warty (yes, that’s a word!). They see a room full of trolls, that’s what.

            Lets play a game:
            I will just assume you are a troll, because, say, I disagree with your idea, or am emotionally butthurt somehow by it (usually assuming some motive or other behind it), or you are a new poster and thus suspect, or just someone else suggested you are and I am blindly rushing gleefully to the attack. I will make a post, and see what your reaction is. Does it seem rational to you? Does it stir rationality in you, or anger and thus irrationality? Do I even mention your idea at all? Can you even tell what the original idea was? Do I seem like a person you can have a rational discussion with? Do you even want to anymore?

            The post:
            Why, you, you, cismail (1), gendernormally, sexish, racisting…NERFHERDER!
            (Work with me here!)

            See, your getting green and warty already.

            (1) Cismail, mail that thinks it’s mail, as against feemail, which is mail with a bill in it.

            People here have been observed to attack new posters as if they were a troll, immediately and personally, even polite and rational ones (they may be wrong, but they were polite and rational about it). The result, they either become a troll like you, or they leave to avoid being contaminated. It is apparently contagious.

            I am not just talking about myself, I wouldn’t have even started discussing this until I saw it happen to others as well. Polite, rational others. They ended up saying:
            I don’t understand why I’m being responded to in this manner. I’ve been respectful throughout this discussion, and unless disagreement by itself warrants banning, I’ve done nothing to deserve the response.

            There’s really no need for personal attack. I will point out that you have now started calling me names. I’ve done nothing of the kind.

            I really don’t understand the hostility, other than I’ve taken a differing position – so I have to leave because what? Because shut up?
            (Yes, I checked it out, he was polite, rational, and called no one any names.)

            So, who were the trolls there? Who .acted like trolls?
            Anyone?
            Anyone?
            Beuller?

              1. Are you sure he has enough functional brain cells to understand you, let alone do what you asked?

                1. One can hope. My faith teaches the possible redemption of even the most unredeemable.

                  1. Only those who wish to be redeemed, and work at it. Contrition is not for the weak.

                    I’ve been withholding comment, because it occasionally offends me that there are those who play at being a victim without really realizing how that trivializes those who *have* been victimized.

                    1. …it occasionally offends me that there are those who play at being a victim without really realizing how that trivializes those who *have* been victimized.

                      Amen.

            2. Go research “internet troll,” you’re misusing it.

              The fellow you’re trying to defend after the fact? Got himself in a mess by stepping into a community squabble, repeatedly noting he “didn’t know the history, but,” and kept pounding on the horse.

              If you don’t understand the community, or don’t understand the argument, or don’t understand why people are reacting the way they are — step back and assess. They may well be out of line. Or you may be gleefully dancing on bruised toes in a room full of short tempers.

              This is not your first visit, Legatus, and you are not the wounded innocent surrounded by the big meanies.

              Whatever, this isn’t for you, this is for the lurkers.

                1. Agreed, ma’am.

                  I shall mosey on to other pastures.

                  (I’m a Texan, I’m allowed to mosey. And if you’re gonna mosey in pastures, watch your step.)

                  2. You know, I’ve been tolerating the creature mostly because it hasn’t OPENLY sworn at us, and because Robin who is a very nice man thinks he might just be tongue tied. But I grow tired. I have no clue what brought him on us, but who is in favor of my deploying Ban, Hammer of Trolls?

                    1. I admire Robin for his patience. But the history does not encourage.

                      But I’m biased by direct involvement in both of his ‘visits’ so I’ll abstain from the vote.

                    2. I’m partial to Larry Correia’s rules for trolls. Keep them around if they’re at least entertaining. This guy isn’t even close. Poor reading comprehension, passive aggressive introduction, and almost nothing close to a coherent thought.

                      We are all dumber for having dealt with him. I award him no points, and may God have mercy on our souls.

                      (Now, guess what my vote is. 😀 )

                    3. I’ll freely admit that my eyes sort of lose focus after I hit the first few words of one of his posts, which while I am sure is involuntary, I now interpret as a kind of defense mechanism.

                      And kudos for the Billy Madison reference.

                    4. *bows*

                      Thank you, thank you. It seemed the appropriate moment to trot that out.

                      I almost busted out the video instead, but laziness took hold.

                    6. That’s actually what I was asking about with the “poof” comment.

                      That he cited a month old post of his reminded me immediately of what I said about the other trollish individual who kept copious reference files of his every post, and would argue mainly with people about what it was he said previously, and noting about any actual topic of discussion.

                      “It’s all about MEEE!” is the real point they’re after.

                    8. I will keep this short for the reasons below.
                      I asked the question, do you believe in personal attacks.
                      The answer was, yes, you do.
                      I do not, I think it is disrespectful and counterproductive, as I have explained.
                      Therefore I have no intention of ever posting here again.

                      Ask yourself, of the people who you have treated as trolls, how many actually were trolls?
                      If you act like trolls, and treat others like trolls, don’t be surprised if they act like trolls back.

                    9. Calling everyone on the blog here is a personal attack also. So what does that make you?

                      Sarah,

                      Was I ever this bad and if so, Sorry!

                    11. Shucks, Leggy, y’all found us out: when somebody busts in here and acts like a troll, we treat them like a troll. Clever of you to out us that way. Not interesting, but clever as a hot dog on a stick.

                      In other news, when a visitor waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, we enjoy duck soup. Nor, when we see a skunk do we invest much effort in sniffing it. Also, most participants here believe the Pope(s) to be Catholic and that you will likely find bear scat in the woods.

                      Still, you are a tiresome & tedious commenter, which we would think regardless of your political, ideological and/or literary affinities. Your commenting technique is nails-on-a-chalkboard and your reading comprehension severely challenged.

                      Which is why nobody here is interested in your opinions and everybody is so aggressive about telling you as much. It isn’t ideological, it isn’t political, it is personal. As the only way to communicate that is via “personal attacks” you haven’t given us much choice about how to address you.

                      Trolls are actually more entertaining than you manage to attain, Legs.

                    12. Correction:
                      Legatus, calling everyone on the blog here [a big meanie] is a personal attack also. So what does that make you?

                      Sarah,

                      Was I ever this bad and if so, Sorry!

                    13. Yes, you asked the questions — in a snarky, passive aggressive way, which is what we objected to. The difference between us is that we admit when we make a mistake. We attempt to clarify if there is something that needs to be clarified and, while there will be thread drift in the comments, the initial comment in a thread will have to do with the post (usually).

                      You say you won’t comment here any longer. Fine. No skin off our noses, especially since it is clear you will never respond to comments that directly address, even quote, what you say. It is obvious you have no interest in having a discussion, only in stamping your feet and pitching a fit because we don’t do and say what you want.

                      As RES said, if you come in and act like a troll, you’re going to be treated like one, especially if you do nothing to prove differently — and you haven’t. My last comment: don’t let the proverbial door hit you on the way out.

            3. Legatus,

              It’s worth remembering that we have a rather… robust discussion standard here. There are people who refer to my intermittent comments as “vivisection”, for instance (on the flip side, when I *do* get it wrong, I apologize).

              That said, there are multiple forms of trolling, including the oh-so-polite concern troll who never gives out any information, persistently misreads everything in a specific fashion that is guaranteed to hit the hostess’s hot buttons, and drives everybody else up the wall with their snide implications and passive-aggressive bullshit.

              You’re starting to sound like that. You’ve yet to give a single concrete example that I can see (and I freely admit the way this thread has exploded I may have missed it). You continue to expound your innocence but you started the whole shitstorm in a can with a snide insinuation that stopped just short of an open accusation and proceeded to do exactly what someone who did this to troll would do, namely protest that you didn’t mean anything by it and you were just asking a simple question.

              Maybe you were. Maybe you really are that… let’s go with naive, shall we? None of the other words I can think of are remotely flattering.

              And maybe, just maybe, you’re still digging your own grave because you were trolling from the start and you can’t possibly admit that or you’ll lose face.

              I don’t know which is the case. I don’t care, either. I’m just sick of it and want to see the usual carping and pun wars instead.

              1. He does seem to hit all of the buttons on the Concern Trolling part of the Internet Arguing Checklist, doesn’t he? Fail sure did, so did the other guy and now Legatus.

                Speaking of things we enjoy, this made me giggle so I’m sharing. (Weird Al Yankovic’s Word Crimes song:

        2. What I was doing was asking a question, that is why I included these things (?) in the post rather frequently.

          I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night.

          So, on top of all your other “lovely” features, you’re a bald-faced liar.

    2. So, can we agree, therefore, that the tactics of the left, where you avoid discussing the merits of an argument or idea, but instead attack the person presenting the idea, even to the point of making up obvious, bald faced lies about them and then attacking them as if they were true, are wrong?

      Like how Scalzi made a sideways swipe at Larry Correia over his blog post about teaching men to not rape. Larry called him on it, and called him on not having the guts to link to the post. Larry called him a “pussy” and Twitter went absolutely nuts.

      Scalzi couldn’t debate Larry on the issue. Nope. Had to start screaming, “Misogyny! Help, help, I’m being repressed!”

      Of course, he wouldn’t come right out and call Larry a misogynist either. Even that had to be backhanded.

      1. That’s exactly the kind of passive-aggressive behavior I was talking about myself. The kind that’s only worthy of invertebrates*, and should be avoided by anyone who wants to stand proudly and call themselves a man or a woman.

        * The spineless, in other words.

            3. When he gets over his condescending streak, he’s much more entertaining and pleasant than Fail. And he can do it, I’ve seen it. He’s just… backslid a little today.

              1. I will be as pleasant as I am treated to the person who treated. That seems to be what people want here, and how they act. And, when they act like personal attacking PCers, I will call hypocrite. See the above post by Amanda Green.

                1. You want to call me out? Then do so directly, not in response to someone else. Also, you might want to actually check my comment this evening to you before doing so.

          3. Might mean anything, might not, but Legatus isn’t routing is net access through an IP in Cairo Egypt, unlike Fail. (Of course, maybe Fail IS in Cairo Egypt. It would explain at least SOME of the insanity.)

          4. I doubt that he could alter his style enough to be both. While there are some similarities, the way they present things is different enough that I’m pretty sure it’s not the same person.

          1. Hah! Like you could convince me to trade my nice hard shell for an endoskeleton! Hey, wait, what are you doi- No, not a crowbar! Get back you- *runs away*

      2. Actually, as I read it, Larry didn’t call Scalzi a ‘pussy’ Larry said that “when he had something to say, he said it.” People who run on implication (like the example Legatus above just did) were pussies. AND in response to said — I would have to state that I’ve never seen anyone avoid answering ‘ideas’ on this blog, except the left wing trolls when confronted with counter ‘ideas’ Which then rates them a insulting nickname.

        1. No, Larry didn’t explicitly say it. However, unlike the dochenozzles on the left, he didn’t make a big issue about that when Scalzi lost his mind.

          Of course, Larry being Larry, he’d have probably just said. “I didn’t call you a pussy, but it doesn’t make change the fact that you are.”

          He’s courteous like that. 🙂

          2. If the shoe fits, you buy it, right; that means that Scalzi was the one to accept the name. Larry simply threw it out and Scalzi jumped on it, bought the package and thought he got a bargain. Wore it proudly he did.

    3. My Daddy would probably be considered an old school liberal, at least at the time when I was growing up. He taught me that ideas should be talked about and examined openly, that in the market place of ideas good ones should be able to stand on their own merits. Of course, he believed that his ideas would be among those that stood unchallenged in the end.

      1. That’s what the communists believed too.

        Until they found need to control information about their failures.

        1. Unfortunetly, if you look over history you will see that people being people, the need to control information about their failures tempts people in power of all stripes.

    4. We would never do that here, would we?

      Would we?

      You haven’t seen some of our in-house, um, contretemps.

    5. Legatus, there’s a pretty strong constant around here-abouts: we don’t all agree totally about too much of anything. We’re unlikely to be constrained by some arbitrary boundaries on how we make cases or how we deal with intrusions and insults. We are not a hive mind.

      The one true, constant constraint is Sarah’s forbearance. It’s her house.

      Beyond that, put on your adult clothes and face all comers.

      I can pretty much guarantee mealy-mouth attempts at subtle digs in an effort to trap or appear superior will be freely mocked. If you’re into that sort of thing, feel free to proceed.

      1. Not a hive mind? That’s good news, because that dance to illustrate directions to a flower patch? I am two left wings….

      2. Beyond that, put on your adult clothes…

        I can’t. I was explicitly told not to dress like an adult at work.

    6. Your passive aggressive accusation has a major false implication right off the bat: the idea that you made an argument.

      Kinda says all that needs to be said about your reasoning skills that you want to accuse others of not engaging substance by an attempt at a subtle claim they are… like the Left.

      2. So i will no longer have the passive part in passive aggressive. I thought I was being polite. I thought perhaps I could ask questions and people would think about the answers.

        And i wasn’t trying to “make an argument”, I was trying to get you to think so that YOU would make the argument. I do not need to “imply” anything, I can cut and paste and show plenty of example to prove it. You can see those examples on this and many other pages.

        People here seem to think that personal attacks are OK. They are, at the very least, usually counterproductive. Perhaps useful against the very worst proven troll, but against everyone else, totally counterproductive. You have been doing it so long you no longer even notice it. Acting like trolls has become habit. Yes, trolls, personal attacks are off topic, and thus are trolling. And all they do is make people angry, causing them to act trollish as well, and waste time.

        1. I’ve tried to basically stay out of this but, come on, let it go. Whether you meant to or not, your initial comment came across as snide and a passive aggressive attack on the regulars here. Whether you think so or not, the fact that so many folks think that ought to tell you that you might want to reconsider what you wrote.

          Pulling in comments from another post, especially one that didn’t involve you and that didn’t (as far as I can tell) even have you commenting on it, is also nothing more than a red herring. It has nothing to do with my post. But then, neither did your original comment. Not really.

          Everyone here is more than glad to discuss and debate. But you don’t give anything specific enough to discuss. Let’s look at what you said to start:

          Quoting me: I don’t know about you but when I was growing up, my parents taught me not to bow down to bullies.

          So, can we say that the people on this site agree with this statement?

          Okay, nothing wrong here. It seems like a rhetorical question. But, just to make sure I answer it, I think it’s pretty clear that most, if not all, of us do agree with my comment.

          So, can we agree, therefore, that the tactics of the left, where you avoid discussing the merits of an argument or idea, but instead attack the person presenting the idea, even to the point of making up obvious, bald faced lies about them and then attacking them as if they were true, are wrong?

          Again, on it’s face, this looks like a rhetorical question. Or, and my nightmares of college return, a set up for a logic question. One of those “if you have A and then B happens, is it necessary that C will then occur in a field in China?”

          And if we see such tactics used here, would remaining silent be complicit agreement or simply cowardice?

          Um, what? Okay, that came in from the outfield. There is no base laid for this comment. Those of us who have dealt with the drive-by commenters and the trolls are now looking at your comment and wondering if we have yet another one in our midst.

          We would never do that here, would we?

          Oh, the attempted snark. Not very successful but now it is clear you have no desire to discuss the post, only make snide and somewhat veiled comments about the folks here. Prove me wrong. Actually discuss the post, with specifics. Otherwise, run along. Your protests that we are treating you badly fail when looking at your comments critically.

          1. “And if we see such tactics used here, would remaining silent be complicit agreement or simply cowardice?
            Um, what? Okay, that came in from the outfield.”

            More accurately, it is an example of false choice. There are far more options than the two Leggy offered, such as indifference or lack of time to address a trivial matter. I don’t know about others, but when I am addressed with a “Have you stopped beating your wife” type of question I feel no burden to treat it as worthy of serious response.

            In fact, in spite of Leggy’s bleatings, I have yet to see a comment from him that is presented with open-minded seriousness. He puts rhetorical razors in his apples and then complains when we refuse to bite.

        2. I thought I was being polite. I thought perhaps I could ask questions and people would think about the answers.

          Then, Legatus, you might need to take a long look at how you word things. You posted something that was identical in form and substance to a particular style of troll. You were called on it, and have been protesting your innocence, shifting goalposts, and generally behaving trollishly ever since.

          A simple “What happened to X on thread [link] looked a lot like bullying to me. Was there context I missed?” will get you genuine responses. “We’d never do that here, would we?” is not a genuine question. It’s an accusation phrased as a question.

          I’m honestly surprised you thought a group with as many people who make their living from words would be incapable of understanding this simple difference. That or you think we’re so stupid you can do this and pretend to be oh, so superior. Good luck with that one, Legatus: we’re the people IQ tests aren’t normed high enough to measure accurately (yes, I’ve been told this. It’s impossible to give an accurate result when you answer everything correctly AND finish in less time than allowed). Several of us are Mensans. There are multiple doctorates in I don’t know how many fields, multiple other degrees, and any number of practical qualifications as well. People here work or have worked in every field imaginable (and some I’d rather not).

          All of this is quite obvious from the posts and the commentary – but you seem to think that a blatant snide remark would be treated as an innocent question, and then you claim the calls for you to man up and give some substance to your accusations (which you have refused to do) are “bullying”.

          Legatus, sweetie, there is a difference between bullying aimed at keeping someone from expressing their opinion anywhere and expecting someone to meet the standards in a particular venue. I’d expect to be ejected from a group if I waltzed in, ignored the standards, and insulted the membership. That is not bullying.

          If that group’s leaders proceeded to get me blackballed everywhere else, that would be bullying. Do you see the difference? Because I don’t think I have the patience to use smaller words or plainer language without moving into my impressive collection of four-letter words and obscene metaphors. And we don’t want that, now, do we?

          1. Because I don’t think I have the patience to use smaller words or plainer language without moving into my impressive collection of four-letter words and obscene metaphors. And we don’t want that, now, do we?

            I don’t know. It could be entertaining considering I’ve never seen you do it and it wouldn’t be aimed at me.

        3. I thought I was being polite.

          So, are you that incredibly stupid, or is it another lie?

          Wait, this just in… I don’t care enough to read past the lie!

        4. So i will no longer have the passive part in passive aggressive. I thought I was being polite. I thought perhaps I could ask questions and people would think about the answers.

          Oh horseshit Legatus. Even my 4 year old granddaughter understands the level of sarcasm and snide you were putting forth. As others have pointed out, you should really take a look at where you’re at before opening your mouth.

          When my kids were teenagers that sort of crap would land them grounded and they knew it. Are you telling me you have less comprehension of what you were doing than a 16 year old?

          Naw, you’re just a troll and got you widdle feewings huwt when you got treated like one.

    7. Ah, Legatus, such passive aggressive BS. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise, just keep on driving and leave the conversation to the adults.

    2. Well, the original hard magic had one thing going right off the bat, a superb cover, or at least I think so, which should have it flying off the shelves, relatively speaking. I mean, everything about that cover said exactly what you would find in the book. You look at it, and if you like that sort of thing, you know that here is where you find it. Everything’s right there.

      The title, hard, as in hard science fiction, zeppelins, guns, that sort of thing, mixed with magic, the kind in fantasy, but adapted to hard, period science fiction.
      The way the oval opening in the black whateveritis sets off the title so you can see it across the room. I mean, most books don’t have an oval like that, but it allows a scene behind the characters, but a dark background to show off the title, author, etc.
      That title is red and jagged so it suggests action, plenty of that.
      The gumshoe looking man and mob moll looking women with hard, period faces, looking like something out of an old hard boiled detective movie from that era, maltese falcon, that sort of thing. Lots of character on those faces, suggests good characters in the story. The slightly bent cigaret is a nice touch,and the nice, big, Thomson submachinegun looking gun which suggests 30’s mob action, and action in general.
      The mostly black and white cover, also suggesting the period movies.
      The way the women and the lettering are red and thus stand out, which, considering that the women is well built, will attract at least half the readers, since it attracts the eye to her first.
      All the title and lettering match, more or less, the womens’ outfit, with red or red bordering.
      And most of all, the man and womans’ faces, so wonderfully hard. I mention them again because those faces are just perfect, the centerpiece of the whole cover. I think he even has a little scar, perfect.
      And you, I saw you not looking exactly at the womens’ face, you bad, bad man. And that will sell books to 🙂

      And of course the book turns out to match the promise of the cover exactly. About the only difference is, the women who matches that hard looking women in the book is a brunette, but people expect hard mob moll looking women to be blonde, so, blond fits better, tells you what to expect, characters wise, in the book.

      Covers on the next two, more…conventional, not quite as interesting. Still, the cover of the first will get you to buy it, and once you do, the content of the book will get you to buy the next two. The first books cover even still looks good on Amazon, the next two, not so much, I wonder how they did that.

      I wonder if the first cover was the expensive one?

  12. Problem’s been around for a while.

    It is the modern literature of the educated, not of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively criminal..The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have never doubted and never will doubt that courage is splendid, that fidelity is noble, that distressed ladies should be rescued, and vanquished enemies spared. There are a large number of cultivated persons who doubt these maxims of daily life. — G.K. Chesterton

    1. There are occasionally vanquished enemies who maybe should not be spared, or you will get a lot of grief down the road.

      Unfortunately it can be pretty damn hard to tell them from those who can be spared.

  13. We’ve been too busy pointing out the lack of logic in their arguments and laughing at them. No, the latest salvo comes because, gasp, someone dared publish a list of “21 Conservative Writers to Read at the Beach”.

    Hey, that’s dangerous- you might make those Evil Evil Nasty Bad conservatives think that it’s possible to read something WITHOUT being directly, openly insulted as a matter of course!

    1. No, the latest salvo comes because, gasp, someone dared publish a list of “21 Conservative Writers to Read at the Beach”.

      Thank Foxfire, for reminding me of the thought that engendered.

      Shouldn’t they be happy to have a list provided for them that they can use as the ’21 Writers Whose Books are to be Avoided at the Beach’?

        1. A few years ago the LA Times (I think) had an article about that, calling it “funemployment”… basically, why the non-recovery was a good thing.

          1. I remember that article! I also remember frothing at the mouth, screaming at them “You absolutely and completely failed Economics 101! If people aren’t employed, then they can’t buy your books because they’re worried about their effin’ FOOD BILL!!!”

              1. A.k.a., why we aren’t seeing raises. Or new hires. And why my property tax just jumped again. Et cetera.

                But that only counts for the stubborn of mind and willful of nature, what would rather push brooms and say “would you like fries with that, sir?” than check the mailbox for the check somebody else earned. There’s a future in the one, if a body works hard. Ain’t one in the other.

                1. Heard someone on the radio this morning positively enthused that we were down to 6.1% unemployment.

                  Of course, to get that rate we’ve had to dump how many tens of millions out of the work force?

                  Cook the books enough, and you end up with nothing approaching reality.

        3. If I tried that 1) I’d crisp up like overdone bacon and 2) my boss would chew me up one side and down the other. Which, since during the summer I’m self-employed, would probably make the neighbors talk. talk more, that is.

          1. Re: 1) You have my sympathy and empathy.

            I’d be there with you the early on the first morning. I might make it to noon if I make liberal use of a strong sunscreen, wear hat and covering clothes.

              1. Museums, yes. Zoos, yes. Walks in the park to vist the ducks? Not so much. Locally the ducks have been surplanted by Canadian Geese. On the other hand, walks in the mountains to get a better view of a water fall or vista, or in a park just because, sure.

            1. Heh. I was refraining on commenting on that, because everything that came off my fingers sounded hateful, ’cause I’m lucky (assuming I have an entire day) to be able to read ONE medium-length novel in a day. 🙂

            2. I refuse to take speed reading classes because I use up my reading material fast enough as it is, thank you.

              But depends on the book. A 600-page academic-difficult history book can take me three days.

              2. I had a seventh grade teacher that taught us the basic speed reading technique. In just part of one class period. While never truly accomplished at it (she read a novel I had with me in less than 10 minutes, and then explained it to the class, to prove she had read and understood it) I did learn it well enough* that I used it for all our ‘required’ reading through the rest of my schooling. It is not a comfortable way to read, and you miss nuances, so I never have used for anything that I WANTED to read. I’m sure it did probably enhance my pleasure reading speed, to some degree, however.

                *I could read your average novel length book in 30 minutes, but only if I didn’t find it interesting, if it is interesting I tend to slow down, this was seldom a problem with the ‘required’ reading in school, however.

        5. 21 books divided by two-three hours a book? Somewhere between 7-11 hours. So basically, a beach weekend or weekends.

          Of course, if you try to read War and Peace or The Tale of Genji at the beach, your eyes will probably fall out from the glare on the pages or the screen.

          1. Check your math — I believe you want to multiply, not divide.

            While right-wing fascist authors probably don’t put a lot of substance in a bookm even at skimming speed most contemporary novels will require more than twenty, thirty minutes to read. (If Ayn Rand is on the list …)

        6. When it rains and the wind blows too hard to fish, or dive, and the tide is wrong to gather shellfish, i can get through a book about every 2 (maybe 3 for fat ones) hours. At least one a night regardless. A couple while traveling. So a week’s holiday – I haven’t had one for oh…17 years… a couple days worth

          1. When we were young and the kids were little, a vacation in Denver (3 days, 4 maybe twice) I bought around 100 books. BUT I read ALL THE TIME, even while supervising kids at amusement park. It was fun.
            I want to be young again and have that time…

    2. (I got caught up in Minecraft…. ~_~;)

      Seriously though, the ‘list of books to read at the beach’ made me think “Why would I carry a stack of books with me to the beach to read? I have plenty of nice, very comfortable spots at home where I can sprawl/curl up/snuggle down/laze to read. They cost me nothing.”

      1. I think it’s because it’s a classic cliche?

        I’ve got small kids. I’m lucky if I have time to blink at any place with moving water!

  14. What annoys me even more than the censorious idiocy of the Left is their paucity of language. Their diatribes lack force and style. I strongly suggest that anybody who wants to engage them read H. L. Mencken. I don’t agree with all of his politics (the claptrap spread about the Germans during WWI, and the behavior of Mitchell Palmer and Woodrow Wilson, made him a little slow on the uptake about Hitler, for example), but my God, what a master of language. And, unlike the prissy britches of the Left, he really did his best to play fair. In the case of the Scopes Monkey Trial, he wrote very clearly that Scopes was a guilty as a cat in a goldfish bowl. He had no more right to teach anything other than the curriculum he was hired to teach than a painter has to paint your house any color he damn well pleases. Mencken made clear in his writing, then and afterward, that the point of the Scopes defense was not to establish Scopes innocence (he had none), but to make the state of Tennessee ridiculous for having such a law and tacking such tripe in schools.

    Reading Mencken cannot help but improve your master of the language of scorn. And if there is anything the nitwits of the Left hate more than being mocked it is being mocked AND scorned.

    And anyway, Mencken is fun.

      1. Which is why originality frequently both derails and deranges them. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be original; just hitting them with an assertion or argument that isn’t worn thin can throw them.

        I mean, if I tell one Mencken’s Law (Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretext of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel), they actually have to stand there and think it through, it runs so contrary to everything they stand for.

    2. Reading Mencken cannot help but improve your master of the language of scorn. And if there is anything the nitwits of the Left hate more than being mocked it is being mocked AND scorned.

      And anyway, Mencken is fun.

      From the quotes I’ve read, yes… yes indeed. Any recommendations?

    3. “What annoys me even more than the censorious idiocy of the Left is their paucity of language.”

      “Maybe you think I’m using hyperbole here, when I describe the bigotry of the SFF genres as “violence”. Maybe I am using hyperbole — but I don’t know what else to call it.”

      and this from a PROFESSIONAL WRITER.

      1. Yes, but to be fair, she’s delusional. Bigotry? SF/F falls over themselves to give prizes to anyone with even a smidgen of “exotic” who mouths the party line.

      2. Yep. Of course, that’s also the same professional writer who submitted some to one of Lightspeed’s “Women Destory” issues and tweet how that was the first piece of original fiction she’d done in a while.

        I’d argue that speech was some pretty original fiction as well.

  15. If that guy does do a list of “fascist” authors, will it be linked here? I may not have as much time to read as I’d like, but I’m always interested in lists of suggested authors I might like.

  16. One of the best insights into this mindset– and where it ends up– and who winds up paying for it– is Solzhenitsyn’s “The First Circle”.

    But I did grow up in the kind of home where “The Gulag Archipelago” was lying around in easily accessible places for minors to pick up and read.

    1. I went out and got Gulag as soon as I could lay my hands on it. I have a first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which needs subtitles because it is written in the vernacular, replete with spelling, of the day. I have read the Communist Manifest of the writings of Lenin, the latter in the original Russian. Yet none of those or any of the other things I’ve read, conservative or liberal or just plain insane, bother and frustrate me as much as the antics of the SJWs and their siblings the GHHers.

    1. Self-reliant == fascist, obviously. Also, disaster fic generally entails the collapse/descent-into-barbarism of urban centers. Lots of people of color live in urban centers. Anything an author writes must be something they want to happen. Therefore, preppers want minorities to die en masse. QED.

      Now I really need another shower… *stalks off, shuddering*

    2. Because the near universal theme in prepper fic is preparedness by the individual rather than allowing the government to come in and rescue these poor, distraught souls.

      Of course, the fact that most post apocalyptic – and to some extent, much prepper fic – novels usually have a government that is incapable of helping probably gets most of us post apocalyptic fiction authors thrown into the same camp.

      1. I should note that I happen to not be much of a fan of prepper fiction, but not because of any philosophical reason. I actually agree with what the preppers in the stories are doing. I just don’t find the books particularly interesting.

          1. I don’t know about you, but I think part of the issue I have is that the reason preppers prep are the exact reasons why prepper fic doesn’t work for me.

            Being prepared for any eventuality automatically minimizes tension. “95 percent of the world is starving? It’s cool. We have ten years worth of food.” “Oh no, a super-volcano is erupting. Good thing we just happened to build this impregnable fortress that can double as a volcano shelter.”

            Tension gets minimized, which makes the story less interesting. Might be why I’ve only got one “prepper” in my post apocalyptic book, and he really didn’t mean to be one…and he’s a relatively minor character.

            1. Yep, hard to right a “we weren’t prepared for what came next” plot when everybody’s gonna look at you and ask “Why not? Preparing is what you do, right?”

              Poor preppers, the end came and they were bored.

                1. Ringo’s Black Tide Rising starts out with a family of preppers and they most certainly were Not bored!

                  1. Because Ringo wrote a story about a prepared family, but who wasn’t prepared for everything. Unfortunately, he’s the exception rather than the rule. Part of why is that he understands that tension and hardship are necessary for a compelling story.

                    In fact, I really don’t classify Black Tide Rising as “prepper fiction”, personally.

                    1. Ringo is in a class of his own. Black Tide is the only zombie series that hopeful and human wave.

                    4. And is there any way to make those damn Amazon links to appear as small sized covers, not those giants they come out as when you do nothing to them besides pasting the link?

              3. Some people like to believe that they can be prepared for anything. It reassures their ‘I am in control of my destiny’ desire, even while admitting that s**t happens.

                1. A mass shooting is one of the most traumatic experiences ever, because there is nothing you can do to assure yourself it won’t ever happen again.

                  Likewise, drunk drivers who kill someone cope better than those who were innocently driving along when someone lunged before the car far too close for them to do anything.

                  Control feels important.

                  1. Yes. An aquaintance, a nurse, was driving home one day when a child ran out from between two cars… The woman was never the same after that, haunted was a good way to discribe her. She kept trying to figure out what she could have done to prevent the accident.

            2. I read that genre a few years back for a bit, and aside from the leanings towards grey gooness, sometimes the authors have to use the Stoopid Ray set on 11 in order get enough going for a story.

              One I was reading that hit the e-wall had the goverment sponsored secret stay-behind super prepper MC leave some kid that he had just rescued alone in his government built super bunker with the prepper’s super well trained government prepper dog in order to drive off on a useless errand, and didn’t tell the kid where the dog was trained to do his business, so the poor kid opened the big hatch to let the dog pee and thus let the bad guys in, who burned, looted, and enabled the plot.

              Now I’m not saying I never did anything stupid, but that degree of targeting of the Stoopid Ray caused me to stop reading right there, I’ve not gone back, and I’ve pretty much read other stuff since.

              Lesson to you authors: Don’t overuse the Stoopid Ray, and never ever go above 7 on the dial.

              1. Yeah, there’s a good bit of that too, though that varies thankfully.

                But I agree. If you turn the Stoopid Ray up above 7, the results really need to be fatal. Big time.

                  1. Case in point: when I watched Pocahontas in Space* (title renamed to avoid confusing with the only good work of fiction with “Avatar” in its name, Avatar: the Last Airbender), I couldn’t get past the first ten minutes. A guy who’s allegedly a Marine gets told repeatedly “When you’re in your new avatar body for the first time, take it easy and don’t make any sudden moves until you get used to it.” So what does he do? Ignores his orders (hence why I said he’s “allegedly” a Marine) and flails around wildly, knocking over trays of medical equipment made of steel, right next to the window to the outside. The outside, whose atmosphere is unbreathable for humans. (Toxic, low oxygen, whatever it was — I forget.) At which point I said “If this was a Ringo story, this idiot would have just gotten the whole base depressurized, and himself & hundreds of others killed.” And I stopped watching, because I already hated the protagonist for being a flippin’ IDIOT. As far as I’m concerned, that movie is ten minutes long and records the ill-fated first colonization attempt on (planet name here)**, in which everyone was killed by the terminal stupidity of one young fool.

                    * At the house of a friend who had bought the Blu-Ray. No way I was paying to see that.

                    ** Can’t remember the planet name, and can’t be bothered to look it up, I care that little.

                    1. I’d imagine that if it was a Ringo story, they would have had a kill switch in the Avatar’s head, and used it. The only way he would have gotten into a position to go rogue on them would have been to be a good little boy for a while, until some native witch doctor managed to remove the implant that could kill him.

                      I keep remembering the story that someone probably took the Avatar idea from, except that in the story, which was set on Jupiter, the Avatar absorbed the crippled guy’s personality and eventually disconnected from him to be completely independent.

                    4. “Call Me Joe” by Poul Anderson. Now available in a collection of his works by the same title.

                    5. re Orders: You have to remember that this is Hollywood, and more relevantly, a James Cameron movie. Orders in Hollywoodland are more along the lines of suggestions unless they are the ones from James Cameron, and there might be a retired Marine working in the skilled trades on set over in studio 347, maybe, at least he once wore a USMC t-shirt when he was rigging the set one day. They don’t recall ever actually talking to him, but certainly James Cameron never talked to him, nor have any of the writers.

        2. I happen to be truly fond of prepper fic. Sure, Good-bye Mr. Chips is more than a little manipulative but the book was better than the movie. But in a genre containing Delderfield’s To Serve Them All My Days, Kipling’s Stalky & Co., Tom Brown’s School Days (which gave us the great Flashman!) and the Lawrenceville Stories relating the adventures of the Prodigious Hickey, Tennessee Shad, Doc Macnooder, the Gutter Pup and the Hungry Smeed — how can you not find something enjoyable?

          Shucks, even Harry Potter is three-quarters prepper story. Ever since I read The Loives of Christopher Chant I have hoped to some day lay hands on the adventures of Millie and her school friends!

          4. I’m gonna hollow out some copies of Tom Brown’s School Days and fill them with plastic explosive just in order to get you for that.

                1. There’s these pictures…

                  I’ve heard about a video, but I discounted it as silly frat boy tales about Tijuana.

            2. As I think I clearly indicated, you would have greater chances of success with a set of “Millie’s Boarding School Adventures”. I never did find out if she made prefect!

        3. I can see that; some of the better ones I’ve read have been “accidental” or “last minute” preppers. Sidesteps the “prepared for everything” problem.

          1. That tends to be much more tolerable to me. Lights Out, for example, was written by someone who I understand to be a prepper, but while his characters are fortunate to have certain skills, they’re not completely set. In fact, most of the story deals with them becoming prepared for whatever’s next, rather than having everything put together and riding it out.

            1. The first book was fun: the series went downhill fast after that and I didn’t bother reading. Although I found it hilarious one of the main characters shared a name with my little sister.

    3. Obviously they don’t place enough faith in the government to take care of everything when TSHTF. Therefore they must be members of a 1920s Italian political movement.

      2. Well, you see, the Italian movement was inspired by a faction of the American Democratic Party.

        *Takes a giant leap.*

        So the Democratic Party is the primal Fascist party, the gold plated original stored in the treasury of Babylon, of which all other Fascist parties are shadows.

        If so, the term would fairly apply to anyone who has ever registered as a Democrat, or voted for a Democrat.

        For my next trick, I will wave my hands, and attempt to convince that Leopold’s Congo belongs entirely on the books of the American Democratic Party.

        1. Oh, take the simple route.

          “Everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Ring a bell?

        2. Mussolini was inspired by the American Progressive movement, and said so.

          And the New Republic Magazine, which was founded to push Progressive ideas, praised Mussolini. I believe it was when he started embarking on military adventures that they began to grow disenchanted with him.

          1. History is a funny thing. There was a time that the world looked kindly upon Mussolini.

            When the Cole Porter 1934 musical Anything Goes came to London the song You’re the Top was tweaked so that the British audience would be better able to ‘get’ it. P.G. Wodehouse, who had the job, changed the couplet ‘You’re an O’Neill drama/You’re Whistler’s Mama’ to ‘You’re Mussolini/ You’re Mrs Sweeny.’ (Mrs Sweeny being the notorious Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyle)

            1. I thought it was:
              “You’re the top, you’re the Great Houdini.
              You’re the top, you are Mussolini.”

            2. Example: Chicago’s Balbo Drive is named after the infamous Italian aviator and Blackshirt. (Although to his credit Wikipedia says that he was “the only leading Fascist to oppose both anti-Jewish racial laws and Mussolini’s alliance with Nazi Germany.”)

    4. Heinlein’s Farnam’s Freehold could be considered Prepper fiction, and “Heinlein is a Fascist” therefore all prepper fiction is fascist.

      And that’s about as far as you can go with liberal logic.

      1. Assertions that “Heinlein is a fascist” are useful: They are a quick way of learning that you needn’t waste your time on that person. (And isn’t it curious how many supposedly “brilliant” people hold such stupid opinions? Or are some of them not stupid but dishonest?)

        1. Lots of people can’t be bothered to form their own opinions, so they take opinions that have been passed around by their friends, and who knows where they originally came from.

          1. Well, sure, but as your momma probably told you, you don’t want to put that opinion in your mouth, there’s no telling where it’s been!

  18. “Damien Walter, he of the Guardian infamy, tweeted that he might just do a column on “scifis [sic] most crazy, fascist authors” and he asked for nominations. Cora Buhlert responded with “Kratman, Wright, VD, Correia, the entire Mad Genius Club, prepper fic authors, anybody in that Buzzfeed article.””

    As a reader, where can I find this list so I know who worth looking into reading?

    😉

      1. Amanda thanks for the link, but was trying for a snarky way of pointing out that band book list never work out the way the ones that make them want.

        😉

          1. We need a snark emji.

            No needed to be sorry, I could have been clearer in my intent.

            😉

  19. Correction:

    banned… emoji…

    And It might help if I stop writting in my own “special” language.

    😀

    1. *chuckle* Aye. But money is nice to have, ephemerally. Well, you may get to hold it for a while before handing it off to the electric company, the water company, the grocer, the gas station attendant, the bookseller…

  21. Pingback: There are times . . . | madgeniusclub

  22. Leg, you misunderstand the dynamics. You initially presented yourself in this community as a argumentative, rude, tendentious and obnoxious. Reappearing and demanding that we prove ourselves worthy of your participation after you’ve already poisoned the well, and doing so in the passive-aggressive manner you selected (and with no effort at rebuttal of multiple accusations of said passive-aggressiveness) is so counter-productive as to render the likelihood of it being inadvertent at nearly nil.

    So nobody is interested in earning your approval. People indicate this by ridicule, name-calling and abuse. That is done not because we don’t want to address your ideas (you’ve presented none) but because we don’t find any reason to put up with you. The rejection is not ideological, it is personal.

    As you have failed to exercise the courtesy of lurking (as demonstrated by your lack of awareness of the many spats with one another that occur here regularly) but instead assume we never attack one another you have further diminished the already minute interest anyone might have in engaging one of your ideas (should you ever present one in a manner that merits somebody reading the whole bleeding incoherent rant.)

    We are not worthy of your participation in our community. Go away. Mind the door as you leave.

      1. Shucks — I thought it a mite long-winded and gratuitous after Holly’s comment. But I lacked time to read all comments or tighten my own and appreciate the praise, so I will only say …

        Or rather, i will let somebody say it for me.

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