I am not trying to start a blog war. Yes, I know that means I’ve lost some of the fire in the belly. But look you, I’m recovering from severe illness, and we’re probably looking at another move this year, plus there’s a bunch of family stuff going on and…. I’m swamped. Also judging from the tone of this article, it would amount to wrestling with a pig. You just get muddy and the pig — being a stupid animal — likes it.
Anyway, since I don’t want to start a blog war, I’m not going to link the offending article, (UPDATE: After sleeping I realized I can do this (derp) with archive link. So if you want to enjoy the nonsense in its full glory https://archive.is/DSSRB) just quote bits of it. However, I daresay if you wish to find it, you can search. I mean, it’s called: Five Ways Fascist Culture Appears in Our Stories. Do you know how fascists see the world?
I actually DO know how fascists see the world. Fascism, classically, is a form of national socialism that relies on “state capitalism.” Which is to say, it relies on the state controlling every commercial and industrial concern in the country for the state’s business. However, since no one has made much of a paen to fascism in the modern world, at least since the Portuguese ancien regime (notably called Estado Novo) stopped cribbing FDR’s speeches and notes, this post seemed a little odd. What were they doing, really? The closest thing to a fascist regime (please don’t remind me we have a bit of that state/industry thing going on please. It’s mostly “environmental” regulations.) in the modern world is the PRC. Were they going to do a tour of Chinese real-politik writing? Sounded interesting.
So, I clicked through. Almost right away, I got a feeling the person writing this might not know fascism from a hole in the ground.
To someone on the left, fascist culture may seem bizarre. Why do they keep supporting a man who has violated all of their moral rules? Fascists don’t view this situation like we do; they have cultural propaganda that repackages repugnant things as attractive. If we want to push back against these ideas rather than spread them, we need to know what they are.
Wait what? Is this person under the impression that people not on the left are … fascists? And then he alludes to crazy ass stuff that implies he’s talking about America. We’ll leave aside the fact that he apparently shoots PBS straight into his veins bypassing his brain, and ask what in the effing hell he thinks the American right — mostly leave-me-alone freedom lovers — has to do with fascists, but the ride gets more bizarre. So put on your helmets, buckle your seat belts, keep hands and feet inside this flaming handbasket to hell at all times, and for the love of heaven stop giggling. We’re not responsible for damage done to your psyche by encounters with a parallel — ahem — differently-logical reality.
But What Is Fascist Culture?
Before we dig in, let’s examine what we’re looking for on a more conceptual level. What do fascists believe? To answer this, I’ve consulted good ol’ Wikipedia and the work of late psychologist Bob Altemeyer.
Altemeyer studied authoritarians for about 60 years before his death in 2023. His 2006 book The Authoritarians* predicted the rise of a fascist authoritarian leader in the US. I also gleaned information from his more recent book, written with John W Dean: Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers.
Face-paw. In which we learn the late psychologist Bob Altemeyer was tripping balls and took his Columbian marching powder with no cutting, straight up. Children, babies and short tailed marmots: if you’re living in a totalitarian nightmare, you’re not publishing cutsey books about the totalitarians. At least not in that country. So to the qualifications of the late Bob and the author of this article we must add: Completely virgin of any even vague nodding acquaintance with historical totalitarianism. Or perhaps more germane: busy posturing for an audience even more clueless than they are, and capable of smarmy and bottomless self-delusion.
Blah blah blah about a group of “Trump followers” who are called “social dominators” (rolls eyes) who have made a conscious choice to work against equality and embrace bigotry. No support for how anyone on the right side of the aisle is actually a bigot or against equality (before the law) but I guess when you’re speaking to delusional ignoramuses, you can just make sh*t up. And they’ve been making sh*t up by the bucketful in the social “sciences” since Margaret Meade was hoaxed by a bunch of teens.
Then we get to the good part, where he examines the intellectual characteristics of what he thinks is the majority on our side. Cough. A moment please while I fetch and excerpt. I am sure all of you who know me and have read me for years will look at these characteristics and…. I won’t spoil it for you. Here:
Submissiveness towards authority. RWAs believe it is a moral duty not just to obey, but also to respect leaders and authority figures that they believe are legitimate. Conversely, they are extremely lenient about the behavior of authorities, believing it is a leader’s right to break the rules.
Conventionalism and conformity. RWAs believe that conforming to traditional social norms is a moral imperative. They want everyone to be the same and do not see value in diversity, bucking trends, or free thinking.
Aggression toward non-conformists and outsiders. RWAs are driven by fear that others will cause the “proper” social order to break down, and this makes them xenophobic and aggressive. In particular, they like to punch down at people who break norms. However, RWAs will show higher aggression toward any group when it is encouraged by their leaders.
Stop laughing! I can’t hear myself thinking for your guffaws. Decorum in the pews.
Look, it’s absolutely hilarious, I get that, to hear someone from what has been not only the dominant, but the overwhelmingly dominant and controlling side of the aisle for the last 100 years imagining that anyone who disagrees with them, that is anyone who has gone against schooling, indoctrination, “expert opinion” the industrial information/entertainment complex, is the “conformist” who hates free thinking. As for the hostility against outsiders, we recommend this fine gentleman buy a mirror. And the soonest the best. And let’s not get into the whole submissiveness to leaders when it comes to a leader who was supposed to be “a kind of god.” PFUI.
I’m running incredibly long, so I’ll just quote the title of his “characteristics” of what I must presume he thinks is OUR fiction.
1. Glorifying Loyalty to an Alpha Male
I have no clue what he’s talking about. Is Alpha Male a furry thing? Anyway, judging by what has gone before, I’m going to assume in his conception an “alpha male” is any man who doesn’t need mommy to tie his shoes, isn’t rendered impotent by the thought that all penetration is violation. If that’s the case, I must admit I often have alpha males in my stories, both villains and protagonists. Even my men who are… ahem fond of the company of men tend to be indeed more than piles of goo in the fetal position on the floor. (Even those who logically should be.) As for glorifying loyalty? What???? Look, my characters PRIZE loyalty to those who deserve it. That can be yes, male leaders, but also female leaders and much more often the weaker people — male, female, alien, raccoons — under their protection. I don’t know what the hell “glorifying” is this context, but I can tell you I’d rather fight by the side of people who prize loyalty than beside weasels who’ll betray you for the next hotness in critical theory.
2. Villainizing Rabble-Rousers
All I have to say is, of course, anyone who has read my books knows I villanize the rabble rousers. In fact, I’m sorry to tell you this everyone in this blog who writes, both commenters and main writers are guilty of this.
This is absolutely true if by “Rabble rousers” this speshul flower means “people who bellyache, smarm and whine about how others are better off while doing nothing to improve or fix the problems.”
At this point one begins to wonder if this wise poster has ever read a book by one of the people he villifies and, shall we say, villanizes.
3. The Man Who Does What It Takes
In which I find out that MacGyver, Simon Templar, and in fact Gilgamesh were all characters in fascist literature.
I don’t feel like reading, much less transcribing the pseudo-intellectual drivel in packed under this heading, but seriously…
Again, face-paw. Let me explain, very carefully how fiction-for-entertainment (as opposed to fiction for preaching, which no one reads, but every politically correct person claims to have read) works: the reader likes reading about a character who can get out of difficult situations in ways the reader himself isn’t sure he could. It’s called a vicarious cathartic experience and also fun. I’m not going to explain the concept of fun, though I think the gentleman poster would do well to study it.
Oh this also makes Captain Kirk a fascist character, something that would shock the heck out Roddenberry.
4. Stranger Danger
The what? No seriously, what the actual, what? I don’t read much on the left. I used to. But I really haven’t since I’ve had a lot more of the indie stuff to read. And this rubric leaves me utterly confused.
Oh, wait, I do read some leftist stuff, mostly young chicks writing JAFF. They’re more likely to have “stranger danger” than anyone else, in that anyone who doesn’t fit the in group they’re portraying as good is bad-evil.
Most of the stuff I read does not portray people who are not in the in-group as dangerous or evil. And in fact, in science fiction, the stranger tends to be far more interesting.
5. Poor Representation
Yes, here he is absolutely correct. Most of us do not represent!
On the serious side, I have to confess that I don’t go out of my way to have one each of any race, ethnicity or other minority I can think of.
This is on account of the fact that, unlike fascists or other leftists, I don’t think of people — and most of my characters are people — as broad categories of groups. I don’t lay awake at night wondering if I have enough pacific islanders in my Regency England romance, for instance.
As for the future, I have serious doubts they will still consider the same categories as categories or obsess about current issues. (Particularly since most of those issues are being kept issues by ideologues mostly interested in power.)
I don’t talk a lot about what color each character is because that absolutely doesn’t matter to me.
You know who was race obsessed? Fascists.
On the other hand we’ve already established the poster is not really cognizant of history or philosophy or much of anything.
I am very disappointed to find this article twaddle wrapped in pretentious academic speech.
I would caution any of you to ignore this stuff and write about real people living in the real world and not the phantasmagoria conjured by the minds of those who live in such an ideologically sealed bubble that they have no idea what is going on in the minds — or books! — of those they would claim as opponents.
NOW: Remember this is a writer’s blog, so confine your discussion to the writerly aspects. If you wish to discuss politics, go to accordingtohoyt.com, where you can pound on the politics to your heart’s content.
A note- This is a political and lifestyle blog, so to discuss such aspects of this post, do so here. If you want to discuss writing and possibly froth at the mouth about writing, head to madgenius.com.
According To Hoyt 
Omnia taedent
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100%
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To quote Bugs Bunny,
“… He don’t know me very well, do he?”
In their heads it’s still 1950 and Dad just said “No, you cannot borrow the car tonight, you busted up the last three cars we bought you!”
Which is, apparently, fascism or something, man….
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Yeah, I skimmed over the quoted bits.
I’m wildly annoyed by the general academic misconduct that purports to be able to show that society is facist going back to some specific time in recent prehistory. Like, I have the vague impression that ‘dawn of everything’ is pegging it ten k to forty k years back or so.
Most of the academic attempts to classify and sort political ideologies are themselves wacky. Especially the danger forecasts.
All of the problem behavior around ideology is academic trained people whose most important theory is not “humans are created in the image of God, so casual murder is blasphemous”. Or academic trained people who have that idea as their most important one, and who wish to be blasphemous, who wish to murder with impunity precisely because other people wish to forbid it as blasphemy.
Most people are simply not fundamentally rooting themselves in academia, and primarily perceiving the world through this one idea that they vaguely listened to someone saying one year. Most people are living in a fairly sensory world, and not just almost entirely obsessed with invisible abstractions.
Sensory world people who primarily prefer to be cruel to others do exist, and they do self select to murder-lots sorts of ideologies.
But, for a non-evil person, the actual trickery danger of evil ideology runs through being so oriented to an abstraction that one does not step back, and see individuals.
In the broader world of behavior outside academia, ideology is not particularly dangerous. If one is oriented to good and to evil, and if one is brave and willing to select good over evil, then an ordered sorting of goals and of means filters out a lot of the insane garbage.
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Character flaws, not a property of specific ideology that is inherent to the cosmetics.
The Jains are maybe pretty okay.
Murderous Jew haters, are more of a fundamentals test, not a cosmetic one. They are not well, and will not orient and navigate to very good places without first stopping and dropping garbage.
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Disappointed, perhaps, but I’m certainly not surprised.
I would expected it enrobed, thusly, as it were, like tin-foil wrapped, gay baked potato .
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Have I mentioned lately that I love you in a totally intellectual and platonic way? If not, take is as granted.
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It might have been funnier if I had found 8-bit big band’s model of a salarian scientist two weeks ago.
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…. There you are, Mrs. Scrint, I hope that answers some of your problems – have a nice trip. (more applause) Well now, the result of last week’s competition when we asked you to find a derogatory term for the Belgians. Well, the response was enormous and we took quite a long time sorting out the winners. There were some very clever entries. Mrs. Hatred of Leicester Said ‘let’s not call them anything, let’s just ignore them’ …
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:looks at the big quote:
That’s some impressive projection, isn’t it?
Literally each one is… actual fact for progressive activists, with the slightest of twitch; the author seems to be failing to demonstrate a theory of mind.
It’s a “leftwingers pretending to be on the right” thing of appearance and behavior that would align strongly with villains who are fond of the company of men. Right down to I kid you not making fun of a guy who ignores a sausage-fest to talk up a friendly supermodel who shows interest in him.
Even if you did, you’d be doing it wrong, because “representation” means they have to fit the box exactly. You are not allowed to deviate.
So the various, ahem, men who prefer the company of men, and the female characters, and such– they don’t do it correctly, so they’re not representation. Dyce isn’t a woman, although if she had a girlfriend she might be allowed under the “Geeky girls must be lesbian” representation rules. She’s probably have to have a lot of different girlfriends, though.
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Dyce, I swear just said “Ew” in my head and also that she’d be as likely to sleep with a girl as to sleep with Ben. Take that as you will.
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I don’t believe her, if she hasn’t fallen asleep leaning against Ben I’ll buy her a cake.
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Leaving aside the fact if she announced they were doing any such thing to Ben he’d ask so many questions as to why she’d STILL be explaining three days later. Or give up and go sand something.
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😘
This was supposed to go here, as a reply to our lovely hostess, but for WP only knows what reason it originally appeared at the end.
🤦♀️
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I still recall a Reader’s Digest issue where one of their reader-submitted stories went something like this: man wakes up after dozing off in class. Sees woman, fellow student, also waking up. Quips, “Even though we slept together, I still respect you.” Punchline: “… and that’s how I met my wife.”
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“Dyce, I swear just said “Ew” in my head…”
This is hilarious. If I took a “poll” among my characters, Alice Haddison would swearing and kicking stuff, while checking her pistol. The others variously rolling their eyes, or looking up the author’s sources of funding to see where the best place would be to put their boot in.
If you’re an Odd girl you gotta be gai? Yeah, uh huh, sure. That’s how it works, no doubt. You betcha.
Also, there’s a bunch of coded references to SDO/RWA “personality research” that I bothered to look up. It seems our little friends have created an entire new realm of slander!
Social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA)
From the jump it’s clear which one is supposed to be “better,” makes it pretty easy to dismiss the entire corpus of it as Lefty balderdash wearing academic robes.
Let me just say here that in my ancient studies at university in Anthropology, mostly what I learned is that if you can’t produce a measurement of it, it ain’t science. Nobody measures anything in Anthropology. You get excommunicated for measurement. It’s racist, y’know.
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The bit about the guys and the model reminds me of something I read a few weeks ago. It didn’t go into detail, but apparently the person writing had spoken to a small group of college women (possibly a group of friends). Out of that group, only one woman was going on dates (no details about the dates). The young women hastened to add that she wasn’t a “pick-me girl”.
Presumably that means that in some circles, it’s the default assumption (though I don’t know how widespread that might be).
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No different than the guys who have to explain they’re not desperate simps or “pussywhipped.”
Both are techniques to gain dates with a hostile culture, which become more common when the culture becomes more hostile.
Given the patterns I’ve seen so far, I suspect the interviewer was projecting a specific subcultural vibe that in prior times would’ve accused the gal who went on dates of being a slut. The biggest question is if it was conscious or unconscious.
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Perhaps it was due to the interviewer. But the detail that she was the only one in the group going on dates suggests to me that her disclaimer might have been the result of in-group pressure.
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If that were so, she wouldn’t have been admitting it to an interviewer while in the group.
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Or one or more other members of the group already knew that she went on dates, and would know that she was lying if she claimed otherwise.
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Most likely most go on dates, but “they’re not date-dates.”
This is bog standard baseline people-watching stuff- if the behavior was disapproved of by the group, then even that-one-exception wouldn’t admit to it to a stranger because it makes the group look bad.
The exception is the “being deliberately outrageous” person, in which case what they admit to would get a reaction from the group as well, at the very least mock-scandal at the admission.
From what you’ve described, it matches the group mostly not making waves but the one person who isn’t going to give the interviewer what they want is taking a stand to show there’s an exception– but they’re not going to fight.
There is also the issue of the interviewer interpreting things to match expectations. I can’t count how many times I give a precise answer and it gets interpreted to fit expectations.
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Now that I have a proper keyboard, and not a smart phone screen…
1.) You suggest a guy being punished for the fairly mild transgression of talking to an attractive women, and I mention women possibly getting defensive about going out. You immediately start aggressively pushing back. Why?
2.) A few weeks ago (iirc), Instapundit had a link up to a piece discussing anonymous women on message boards complaining that misandry being pushed at their colleges and universities messed them up in the head enough that it made them difficult for them to go on dates.
3.) First you claim that the interviewer must have been implying that the defensive woman was a slut. Then you claim that the interviewer is interpreting the chat to match expectations. Which is it?
4.) “Pick-me girl” is pretty strongly focused on woman vs woman. It describes a woman who actively makes herself more appealing to guys, in part by tearing down the women around her (through lies and slander). A guy might complain about a woman who’s trying too hard. But he’ll likely be oblivious to the inter-female competition aspect of it.
What I see is this behavior linking with point #2. Some women have apparently self-confessed that the misandry the universities are pushing on them has messed them up in the head when it comes to dating. This indicates a highly anti-male environment. If the environment is hostile toward men, then it wouldn’t be surprising that at least a couple of circles of women are actively hostile toward the idea of a woman going out on dates with men. Insults about the women doing so would likely be common. If a woman in that sort of environment feels compelled to admit that she’s dating men, then she’ll also likely feel the need to say something defensive about her actions.
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….?
I literally described a rather famous on-video event followed up by public mocking in the context of one of mainstream “alpha male” influencers.
You vaguely described your memory of a report of an interview.
I interacted with you on that subject for several posts, and you found that to be “aggressive pushback.”
*********
The rest of your post can be similarly boiled down to “why do you not align with the story I have chosen?”
If you can bring yourself to bear the suffering of reading the words of someone who does not already agree with your conclusions, we can continue the conversation.
You would, however, be well served by going back over and looking at what is written, instead of what you’ve concluded someone must obviously mean.
There is also the option of actually moving forward with the conversation and attempting to engage with what was said in the specifi context.
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I’m saying things similar to what you’re reporting, only with the genders swapped. I’ve cited my source (posts made within the last month on Instapundit), and the issue with the anonymous college women posting about their dating issues was brought up here after it appeared on Instapundit. The fact that you don’t remember it doesn’t change it anymore than the fact that I have no clue what video you’re talking about. But I don’t discount your comment, because I’ve read about similar silliness elsewhere.
What I’m describing shouldn’t be a surprise, frankly, given what we know about the university environment, and the outlooks of some women. The question shouldn’t be whether it’s happening. It should be how *widespread* it is. And that is something that I don’t think anyone knows yet.
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Why are you now changing away from your outrage at “aggressive pushback” from someone literally discussing the subject like the people involved are human beings, even if you’ve concluded the situations are “similar”?
Is the idea that your conclusion is not automatic that threatening to you? To the point you cannot even engage with the actual discussion?
I am frankly tired of subjects being changed over to talking about ME when the original subject (in this case, “described situation=> conclusion => additional other considerations”) was not dealt with.
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Why wouldn’t it be about your response? You described something. I noted that I had also seen mention of something similar, albeit with the genders reversed. I concluded by stating that I had no idea whether what I had heard about was widespread or not.
Your response was to attack the interviewer (“… projecting a specific subcultural vibe that in prior times would’ve accused the gal who went on dates of being a slut.”) for being sloppy at best, and malicious at worst. This despite, by your own admission, not being familiar with the interview in question.
If you think that there’s outside evidence that casts doubt on the interview results, that’s fine. Maybe you’ve seen recent surveys that say dating is up among women in college. You wouldn’t even need to present those surveys, as I have no reason to disbelieve if you say you’ve seen them. But instead of doing that, you blamed the interviewer for a bad interview without knowing more than the barest minimum about the interview.
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Because conversations are about the subject, and the actual words are RIGHT THERE to interact with.
Alright, then by your chosen definition of ‘attack,’ you were attacking the women in the group. How microagression of you.
In the world with green grass and blue sky, this is– as I pointed out before– very basic considerations for people interacting in a group, especially when you’re talking about young women.
Which is why there were multiple possible options pointed out to consider.
They don’t gain social standing by picking fights, and in fact are highly vulnerable to accusations about being unpleasant. Some are even, strangely, actually fond of human beings, and will try to be PLEASANT to be around.
So, the views that the group reads off of an interviewer are a large influence. Especially when they could just leave, instead of interacting at all.
A different angle of this can be seen in the occasional troll swarms that show up and ‘read’ Sarah as holding views that she can’t reach with a 30ft pole. Do they actually believe what they say? Very unlikely, but they are attempting to communicate a meaning.
In contrast, supposedly “alpha” guys who mock a young man for choosing to talk to a pretty girl rather than drooling over a bunch of guys who love doing videos of themselves shirtless and working out, to be watched by other guys…..
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Basic thing to keep in mind:
The interviewer does not have a right to the information.
Just like when someone asks “how are you today” you are not lying by saying “Fine, and yourself?”
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“How are you doing?”
“Hangin’ in there” or “Fair to partly cloudy.” If you really want to leave people confused, “Finer than frog’s hair!” Or “fair to middlin’,” and see if they know how to grade cotton.
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If I’m not “fine” I often will answer the smalltalk question with “I plead the Fifth,” and sometimes open-end the question as to which “Fifth,” whether “Amendment” or “of Whiskey” I’m referring to.
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If I’m not “fine” I often will answer the smalltalk question with “I plead the Fifth,” and sometimes open-end the question as to which “Fifth,” whether “Amendment” or “of Whiskey” I’m referring to.
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When my knee is killing me, I’ve been known to answer: “I’d rather not say”, or “You really don’t want to know.” The latter answer is when the pain gets intense.
I was supposed to see the surgeon yesterday, but he got called out to the ER for something nasty. Next Tuesday, Murphy cooperating is the reschedule. Meanwhile, the knee is slowly getting worse. Arthroscopic surgery removed torn meniscus, but the underlaying arthritis is dominating.
I hate pain that I can’t do much about. [Eyes the shopping scooters at the grocery stores. Maybe…]
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If your knee hurts bad, the scooters are there for you to use. Shop smarter, not harder.
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Have to give it a try. OTOH, standing up (why do the canned goods I need hide at my 6′ eye level?) can be roughly as painful as walking with a cane through the stores.
The new appointment with the doc is on shopping day, but it’ll be the first stop of the day. Will be a relief to find out what’s available for treatment. TKR should still be on the menu.
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After reading the Imposter post, I caught on. I haven’t convinced myself that i deserve to use a scooter. OTOH, I’ve caused consternation for a shopper who thought I was (angrily? not sure how it mapped) waiting to go in her aisle. I explained “it hurts more to move than not”. I think/hope I apologized.
If Fred’s (Kroger department/grocery story–think upscale WalMart) doesn’t have a scooter at the north entrance (where I can park without needing a compass and trailmix), I can limp to the main doorway and snag one.
Opinions refined after I <strike>broke</strike> shattered my rule of a few steps on a ladder. It had to be done. Ouch. The wasp nest in the pumphouse gable end insulation was strong incentive. Woodpeckers and their buddies. Arggh.
Not sure if it was Ambrose Bierce or Poul Anderson in a slightly altered variant. Paraphrase: “Man thinks he’s a rational animal. Many times, he’s rationalizing.”
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That particular question drive me nuts since I always want to give an honest answer and that’s not why people ask that question. So I’ve taken to answering “I’m doing my best”.
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Long form: “Still looking at the grass from the top. …”
Shorter form: “Not dead.”
Either followed by: “Could be worse.”
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“I’m alive” usually gets a laugh.
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I say Joyful. It is true, since Joy is an infinity, and my circumstances do not change it. It also reminds me to be Joyful.
A bank teller told me she thinks of joy when I walk into the bank, because I say Joyful, when she asks. I have a Christmas Jack in the Box Joy antenna ball on my car antenna. So I tell people that Joy follows me wherever I go.
It is also like the fish, a sign to a stranger who knows the Joy. Who knows the Joy of being forgiven..
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That is lovely.
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We should call them “Projectives” or “The Projective Left” not “Progressives”. Much better fit for actual Leftroid behavior.
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fascist ought to mean something, and once did but we’ve gone from an actually existing political movement by way of Soviet propaganda through not Stalinist, to whatever the current left doesn’t like.
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Stalin did originate the ‘NSDAP is Right-Wing’ lie, which today’s Leftroids parrot mindlessly.
Closest thing we’ve had to a fascist lately was 0bama — or, more accurately, 0bama’s ventriloquists.
One of my characters is going to meet 0bama. “What have you ever accomplished? You recite words composed by other people, you sign papers written by other people, you spend money taken from other people.”
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But he has great self-esteem!
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Idiots usually do.
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I tried listening to one of his campaign speeches. Coors <strike>Light</strike>Edge has more substance.
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Obama had mastered the One Simple Trick™ to sound reasonable. All Obama speeches were recited in a calm voice and went like this, “We all feel the urgency of , and we must always strive towards but never neglect .
Most listeners thought he sounded perfectly reasonable without realizing he had just listed two contradictory things as if he agreed with both.
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Well, I messed that up. I used angle brackets for my [fill in the blanks] and WP thought, “That’s HTML, so I’m disappearing it, but it’s not really HTML, so I’m not doing anything except disappearing it.”
What it was supposed to say is, “We all feel the urgency of [some important issue] , and we must always strive towards [largest faction’s preferred solution] but never neglect [next largest faction’s preferred and contradictory solution].
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Yeah, that’s Obumbles through and through. And when you state it that way, his speeches sound like Dolores Umbridge’s opening speech in Order of the Phoenix . Somehow that does not shock me The banality of Umbridge and Obama’s evil is part of what makes it so frustrating and terrifying.
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“One of my characters is going to meet 0bama.”
Ha, I did that at the end of Angels Incorporated. He shows up at the beach resort where they’re having a holiday. Hilarity ensues. ~:D
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0bama shows up to a sort of ‘open house’ they hold for the startup of San Onofre Fusion Unit 1 and whips out his favorite line: “You didn’t build that.”
“Then who did build it? Pixies? We designed this reactor together, I fabricated and programmed the nanomachines that assembled it, and my husband arranged for the raw materials to be delivered. We both monitored every aspect of construction. If you don’t have anything intelligent to say, keep your yap shut and don’t prove to everybody what a dumbass you are.”
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Well, it was right-wing in Stalin’s time — the right wing of a vicious internal schism between Marxist factions vying for power. Leftists in the US have been larping 1930s Germany for quite some time, and they’re simultaneously eager to accelerate the game and deathly afraid that America just won’t play.
To people whose minds are trapped in socialism and can’t conceive of anything outside it, everything that isn’t the leftism du jour becomes fascism. It’s the only thing they’ve got.
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Time to review this:
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2015/10/23/right-left-right-a-recent-blast-from-the-past/
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I know what I’d ask Obama.
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I’d ask him if Mooch was a chick. The wife doesn’t think so, but I’m not sure.
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I still recall the dance video from Ellen Degenerate’s show. Something was moving in that area, and it’s an odd place to hold a holster… (Admits ignorance for the more creative CCW holders of the Distaff sex.)
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Probably a bladder control pad, or something anti-chafing.
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Not a new definition. Instapundit (I think) recently put up a quote from Orwell in *1944* in which he noted that the insult “fascist” had devolved to mean someone or something that the insult giver didn’t like. And that was while the Allies were still fighting *actual fascists* (under German leadership, since Mr. Fascist himself was deposed at that point).
And, of course, there’s the very first instance of a Republican political candidate being called a Nazi clear back in the mid-’30s.
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Orwell noted it meant nothing back in the day when there were actual Fascists running Italy.
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This idiot is trying to define something that George Orwell was unable to define? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Of course, Orwell’s attempt involved listening to the people who called themselves Fascist.
This idiot is of the school of thought that goes “Anything I don’t like is Fascist”. 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡
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Well, they’ve only been trying since 1950 to pathologize conservatism (Adorno F scale). They’re not very good at it (or anything else, really), so please be patient.
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A problem with Hitler’s NSDAP was in attempting to turn the sorts of men that the communists used to some other end.
If a fault is in the men themselves, then it can also be a fault to try to use them as those other masters would use them. (This is another formulation for ‘if goals are not symmetric, then strategies and tactics would also lack symmetry’.)
If someone thinks that the communists and their methods have a heap of powerful magic, then they could feel a need to have that magic for themselves. So it can be truth for a communist-adjacent that heresy means fascism.
Setting violent theory obsessives to run amok tends to not be really useful for peaceful civilized purposes. Setting violent theory obsessives to run amok ‘for our side’, is going to tend to develop in non-peaceful, non-civilized directions.
Note, I am not trying to give Hitler any credit for good intentions here. Explicitly, I do not think he did.
The first thing I described was a problem with Hitler’s NSDAP. It was far from being the only, or the most important, problem with Hitler, and problem with the NSDAP.
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If you read translations of the stuff coming from the original Sturmabteilung (aka SA aka Brownshirts), they were -radically- Marxist/Communist “revolutionary Socialists”. The were a virally-spreading revolutionary lunatic org, heavily Marxoid.
The key reason for “the Night of the Long Knives”, where the Schutzstaffel (aka SS aka Protection Squadron) arrested and murdered the SA leadership, was simple: the SA scared the crap our of the merely insane average Nazi fanatics, including Herr Schickelgruber of the Bad Mustache. FurherLoon and his SS goons made a deal with the Army and other less crazy minded members of German society for obediance in exchange for putting the SA maniacs on a leash. Note, the SA made -Lenin’s- Bolsheveks look lukewarm.
Much was retconned later, like good little leftroids. The “memory hole” was enormous and industrially fed. Essentially, Herr LCatterpillarLip hijacked the not-quite-completely-hardcore Communists to be “National Socialists”, filed off the serial numbers, and pretended it was somehow his original work and not just further (fuher?) enshittified Marxist raving.
The whole “Eastern Front”/”Great Patriotic War” mess was essentially “No! -I- am the self selected Elite to Lead the Revolution!”
Left for another day is discussion the various “Well, we will be the -nice- collectivists!” in various other belligerent factions. (grin)
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I have long contended that WW11 was so vicious not because it was a fight for freedom and democracy so much as a knock down, drag out battle between various flavors of socialism to see which one would end up dominant. Hitler’s National Socialism, Stalin’s Communism, the UK’s brand of Fabian socialism, whatever label it might claim, Mussolini’s Fascism, FDR’s New Deal disaster, not sure Japan was actually socialist but it was pretty authoritarian at the time and got tangled up with Germany & Italy so I suspect birds of a feather . . .
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With Japan, the native political ideologies or philosophies could be more than wacky enough for homebrew to be very bad.
Meiji was maybe actually an improvement over the Tokugawa shogunate, and still had a bunch of institutions that pretty directly developed into the excesses of WWII. The censors, the stuff they pushed in the schools, etc.
The cult of the military bureaucracies was drinking its own ink fairly badly, and some of the flaws of communism were fairly normal inventions at those times.
It feels like it probably requires an extremely fluent historian of Japan.
The Japanese very definitely had socialists later, but I’m not sure how much of that was a post war thing.
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The Imperial Japan military of the 1930s was a fanaticism built on Bushido and Samurai history, but extremist even by those standards. It was also yet another global collectivism, that exceeded even the Japanese character of conformity and harmony. And that is saying much.
Its like some malevolent organism arrived in 1920 and turned up everyone’s “respect my authoritay!” to 11.
Ooooooooo Plot Bunny! The aliens wanted to control or wreck us with authoritarian collectivism as a literal mind virus, and turned us into the future’s super SpaceWarriors and fanatic Liberty types! Kinda the Reavers for Liberty!
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Japan had an interesting path through industrialization to that point.
Marxism was extremely heavily a creature of the magical thinking invented by people as they experienced the industrial revolution.
I’m basically from the PoV of quibbling over descent from a common ancestor versus independent invention. We can show a lot of the common ancestry and mutual borrowing between the other cases.
Japan both has a lot of special and unique, and has a bunch of different scholarly or academic schools built around overselling the ‘we are so speshul and unique’ arguments of various sorts. (Which can actually be said of many nations.)
Russia was right there, so should have been an influence. Yet, I would suspect that the Japanese nationalists at that time were not marketing themselves as influenced by the Russians, or as trying to catch up to the Russians at being Russian.
I can tell that a fair evaluation is not something I have done, or been able to do, and figure it is maybe really hard. So I’m probably undercounting the number of hobbyists who have done it for kicks and giggles.
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Japan did build a world-class Navy in a remarkably short time, by studying the other “bests” and summing up most of the good parts. If they had understood “rotate combat pilots through school assignments” and “damage control excellence is more important than top-of-the-line hardware”, they might have won.
The glass jaws of the Zero and IJN carriers were definitely a problem.
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Certainly, they were all statist collectivists of one stripe or another….
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Yeah. According to Shirer (Rise and Fall of the Third Reich), Hitler liked Roehm (sp?). But Roehm wanted to take things much further than Hitler did, and would have kept pushing for it if Hitler hadn’t had him killed.
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Another book to retrieve whenever I get up to the mezzanine storage/library in the shop/barn. Either that or check the Kindle price… [Looks, it’s more expensive than I like. I’ll pick a day when I don’t have to be upright otherwise.]
[Glances at $SPOUSE’s disused sewing/weaving shop. Could I convince her that it should be a library? Would I survive the discussion? Unlikely for the first, unclear on the second. Referencing for a similar situation http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff4400/fv04372.htm ]
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Mussolini himself was famously unable to define ‘fascism’ past ‘whatever I want to do today.’
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“Everything within the State. Nothing outside the State. Nothing against the State.” was rather apt.
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I believe that’s the definition of totalitarianism. As a part of Fascism, to be sure.
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I actually read that article. At the risk of being annoying (usually anytime I open my mouth), I’ll repeat what I wrote on Discord yesterday.
Most of it is hilarious projection. Yeah, those evil fascists insist on blindly obeying leaders. Funny So, it was all those fascists who insisted on masking everybody because Fauci said so. Good to know. They ignore the faults, weaknesses, and missteps of their leaders because they think their intentions are good. Right, and Joe Biden was the robust picture of health right up to the moment he wasn’t anymore. Good to know that all those Biden sycophants were fascists.
Also I’m thinking of teasing my friend Rebecca Yarros with the news that she’s a fascist because, aside from her main female character, a male character is the next best and actually makes decisions.
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I see. So they condemn our ‘submissiveness to authority’ while hating us for refusing to submit to their authority. 🤔
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[insert south park clip here] “Respect My Authoritay!”
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DIng Ding Ding Ding. Got it in one.
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Why should I submit to their authority? They aren’t God.
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Thank you!
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“Sorry, I don’t like this kind of domination and submission. I’m safe wording. ‘Declaration of Independence’.”
Which would leave them terribly confused as I made my escape.
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You mean like this? 😁
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That album is a banger. Still have the vinyl.
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You could always scream “Natural Rights, Natural Rights!!!” That always seems to give them the heebie jeebies
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Hear!!! Hear!!!
I think what bothers them more is that our tendency is NOT to bow the knee but to the Author. Their morals are mostly the ends justify the means. We tend to avoid that with two exceptions
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Anyone else remember Donna Brazile being hired by the Democrats to teach Al Gore to be an “Alpha Male”. Seems like once they failed miserably at that they declared such thinking was stupid and only for losers.
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Weak minds assume any position your characters take in a book reflect you personally. They don’t understand the whole concept of fiction. They write propaganda, not fiction, because any view not theirs is reduced to simplest caricature of evil. They are all fascists, and racists, and Hitler. It makes for pretty boring writing. Don’t take them too seriously. Some will grow out of it and the hopeless will get worse. They will alienate all their family by only wanting to talk about issues, and run for Congress.
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Niven’s Law: “There is a technical, literary term for those who mistake the opinions and beliefs of characters in a novel for those of the author. The term is ‘idiot’.”
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I like it. It’s up there with Sturgeon’s, Pournelle’s Iron, and Clarke’s Third Laws, and just a step or two behind Murphy’s.
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I like it. It’s up there with Sturgeon’s, Pournelle’s Iron, and Clarke’s Third Laws, and just a step or two behind Murphy’s.
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I thought that was Heinlein?
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S. M. Stirling claimed that Niven said that (in the forward of one of his (Stirling) novels).
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“That which opposes Worldwide Socialism is Fascist.”
“The Evil we do is actually done by our opponents, as we imagine ourselves doing, which is not of course Evil.”
and of course
“Power to the Party in the Name of the People. Shut up.”
“Slavery is Freedom”
…
Ever notice real “alphas” just lead and others follow? No talk, no drama. Just happens. Its the loud-mouthed Betas shrieking “NO! -I- am Alpha! -I- AM!” And yes, those sad creatures are ultimately a Furry thing.
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I’m going to go for another take, based on the excerpts here.
On one level, this looks like basic indoctrination; a primer on What the Bad People Believe (and therefore what you, boys and girls, as Good People, should not believe). Bad People are Fascists, because everybody knows Fascists are Bad People. It ought to be a clue that Hitler is the Ultimate Fascist, (possibly with dishonorable mentions to Franco and Pinochet for the slightly better historically informed). Hitler, to modern doctrine, is the personification of every evil, though that’s getting complicated: somehow, one must ignore the Holocaust, or focus on the non-Jewish victims, while maintaining one’s view of him as a bloodthirsty monster. The fact that so many of the peope putting out this stuff are obsessively focused on Hitler, without a thought for the equal and worse horrors of Uncle Joe, Comrade Mao, Pol Pot and King “Launch the Nukes if I’m killed,” Jun Eun, shows where their training came from. As if we didn’t know.
But I’m thinking this article may be meant more in the way of reassurance. “In these dark times, when the forces of Darkness seem ascendent, remember, Boys and Girls, that you are the Good People, and here’s how you can recognize the Bad People when you see them. Bad People -” followed by the list in the article.
Which suggests the nimrods who are trying to maintain their dominance are worried about doubts among their followers. It reminds me of one of Schmitz’s Agent of Vega stories (“The Illusionist,”) where one character is beginning to develop doubts about the (thoroughly wrongheaded) system she was brought up in and wonders if she needs a few weeks of re-indoctrination in the system. I suspect this article is part of that basic re-indoctrination for potential doubters.
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Have to ignore the killing off the disabled or costly to take care of folks, too.
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But…but that would mean the Glorious Socialist Paradise Of The Great White North, Canuckistan, is fascist and Eeevul! 😛
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“…the Glorious Socialist Paradise Of The Great White North, Canuckistan, is fascist and Eeevul!”
It is. >:D
Did you see my post at MGC? Look at the latest thing going on in Canadian media:
https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2026/05/13/things-youre-gonna-see-on-the-cbc-30/
Goebbels-101, smear your opponents. With government funding. Ten years ago, if somebody told me the CBC would do this I’d have laughed. Today, 2026, I’m wondering where else they may have done this that I’ve missed.
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Hope you have a plan to scoot over the border, or way west, and fast. because Canada as such is about to turn to a very, very dark place. “Make examples” phase begins in 2 years or less. And I do not mean the love pats recently applied to uppity truckers.
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Reminds me of a rather dark meme I saw about giving unsolicited medical advice in Canada.
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I’m sure the ‘anti-fascists’ of the Democratic Party are all people of good will, excellent discernment, and are not at all rote cosmetic idjits or in the pay of the CCP.
Nope, no insecure psychopaths there whatsoever.
They definitely are not desperate.
They are not distressed, and if you drew an accurate fishbone diagram of why they are (not) distressed, it would not say that they fucked up by investing in ‘perfect-information zero-chaos’ plans, and by assuming that after ‘one smart guy’ waved his hands, everything afterwards would just happen for them.
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The StoogeAbteilung of Portland? WooWoooWooWooWooo……
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Just call them SturmAntifa.
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“Which suggests the nimrods who are trying to maintain their dominance are worried about doubts among their followers.”
Finding out that the much beloved by Lefties Southern Poverty Law Center was literally funding actual Nazis and the KKK, with real money, must have been a bit of a shock to some of the unpaid useful idiots.
To me the hilarity of this post starts with the title. “Five Ways Fascist Culture Appears in Our Stories. Do you know how fascists see the world?“
How many unexamined assertions is this?
That’s a lot of bullsh1t to stuff into a title. Eight gallons in a five gallon pail.
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Their insistence that it’s the right-wingers living in fear and ruling by fear was very telling.
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Such as the way they accuse those of us in favor of the 2nd Amendment of ‘clinging to your guns in fear’. Hey, you’re the ones terrified of your fellow citizens owning guns, not us.
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I made the mistake of reading their [obviously curated] comments section.
Reads like a bunch of university students vying for who can signal the most virtuous faithfulness to scripture.
For some reason this thing p1ssed me off out of all proportion to the microscopic amount of effort the “author” put into it. Damned if I give this beeotch a free click or a free comment though.
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The Donks have been funding their KKK since 1865.
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Most of us here write about realistic people living in imaginary worlds, solving problems more interesting and satisfying than dealing with credentialed left-wing lunatics or petty bureaucratic tyrants.
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well, yes. BUT I mean a world that obeys logic and physics oh, and human nature.
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Logic, physics, human nature!?!?
Sounds like things a fascist would say.
Feelings, comrade, feelings. Feelings über alles.
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They make me feel nauseated.
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emulating a rational knowable world with some verisimulitude in the emulation
not emulating a rational knowable world with verisimulitude
The basic problem with trying to communicate this across political lines is the splits in perception about behavior.
Consensus driven world that admits epicycles of conspiracy theory is not rationally knowable. But, it can identify as being rationally knowable.
i dunno
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Last time I saw this much projection going on, the Cinemark 24-plex theater was still in operation.
“Why do they keep supporting a man who has violated all of their moral rules?” Um, are we talking about the Maine Nazi, got an SS tattoo, says women are responsible for being raped, but we have to support him in order to defeat the evil that is Susan Collins?
“Conversely, they are extremely lenient about the behavior of authorities, believing it is a leader’s right to break the rules.” Bill Clinton, anyone? “A little sexual harassment is a small price to pay for keeping abortion legal.”
“In particular, they like to punch down at people who break norms.” From the people who brought us cancel culture. Remember the rodeo clown who dared to make fun of Obama, to give just one of many examples?
And yes, it’s very true that none of this would be written in a totalitarian culture. To quote a Hungarian thinker who actually lived under one, about his experiences under the Soviets.
“In the fifties, you didn’t try to fight it. You just kept your head down and hoped that no one would notice you. In the sixties, something shifted. You still couldn’t talk about IT—but you could talk about the fact that there was something that you weren’t allowed to talk about.”
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I got a little ways into the article’s comments, and was mildly disappointed to not see “Ha-ha-ha-ha! Bwa-ha-ha-ha. Breath. [Repeat]”
OTOH, my mind provided the appropriate response. Was not going to post in that Bloosky comment section, though.
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RWAs believe it is a moral duty not just to obey, but also to respect leaders and authority figures that they believe are legitimate.
There are a couple of caveats, but generally accurate.
Conversely, they are extremely lenient about the behavior of authorities, believing it is a leader’s right to break the rules
record scratch lolwut? A legitimate authority figure follows the rules, or if they’re terrible rules that never should have been rules int he first place, gets rid of them. That’s part of how you know they’re a legitimate authority.
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The biggest caveat is that we have a theory of what “legitimate authority” is, and the #1 way for someone to lose the title is to… exceed their authority, much less violate it.
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‘Legitimate’ being the key concept here. Brain-Dead Biden was not legitimate; the 2020 election was subverted by massive fraud. Everything the zombie(‘s ventriloquists) did should be overturned on that basis.
Donald Trump, whatever anybody says about him, won both the Electoral College and a solid popular majority in 2024. This in spite of several Democrat-ruled states not managing to finish counting their ‘votes’ until 2 months after the election. Kalifornia was still ‘counting votes’ after Trump was inaugurated, for Ghu’s sake.
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We really need to liberate California at some point.
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Spencer Pratt seems like a very weird indicator to me.
The two candidates for governor make a bit of sense to me.
Pratt and his wife seem to have been okay at playing Hollywood politics for jobs.
That is good prep for political theater, sure.
But, we aren’t talking about a symptom of leftwing strength, and widespread Democrat support, that a guy can do so well on such a campaign.
Anyway, the votes won’t be definitive evidence until after the election, and so many things can happen.
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In the current day Los Angeles political spectrum, Spencer Pratt is pretty much Winston Churchill.
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It’s mostly because Marxist-aligned types needed to have a new bogeyman to screech at, so they took the Nazi’s atrocities and decided “fascist” was the new one. Then they made a “list” they could use to make any potential opponent into a “fascist” they could justify opposing/destroying. I think there was an older list that had similar categories.
I use a summation attributed to Mussolini: “All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.”
Then point out how well the ones screeching “FASCIST!1!!” are aligning with that.
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“Then point out how well the ones screeching “FASCIST!1!!” are aligning with that.”
You can’t. Honestly, when you tell them that gun control was originally a Nazi program, they just scream REEEE!!!1!
Since the revelations about US AID and the SPLC being found funding the KKK, I assume most of these people are being paid to push this drivel. Either by the American Left or some foreign agitator.
You can’t argue with a paid shill. But you can find out what scum are funding them, and expose their corrupt practices. Go Nick Shirley!
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I told you yesterday about the Kalifornia mayor that pled guilty to being a communist Chinese spy. 😮
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Ah yes, that was a beauty.
How long before the Kalifornia governor is arrested for being a Chinese spy?
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I don’t know about Chinese spy (though yes to Chinese Running Dog, borrowing from ’60s and ’70s Commie insults), but it looks like there may be more than a few charges that could be applied. Have to get some popcorn.
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Newsome? Nah he’s just a useful idiot, With VERY small values on the useful.
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The path from ‘useful idiot’ to ‘expendable pawn’ is quite short. 😬
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Let those among us who have not accepted large amounts of money and maintained encrypted communication channels where we receive detailed instructions from hostile foreign powers on how to perform our official duties cast the first stone.
Wait…
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Hey, calm down! Plenty of stones for everyone!
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I like hanging as a form of capital punishment.
I also like having sound and deliberate trials before we put someone to death.
I think we may be able to clean up the current messes without stoning anyone.
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I’m still partial to guillotines. Quick, efficient, 100% effective when used as directed, and when you’ve got a head in a basket there’s no need for a doctor to declare the condemned dead. Hey, the French never got any complaints!
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Wrong approach.
Nail the scoundrels up on crosses. A few such public executions, and the prospect of plenty more, will have a profound effect on would be scoundrels.
Its one thing to contemplate a quick death, Quite another to contemplate one of 3-5 days duration, complete with crows picking at the soon-to-be remains while the crucifant prays aloud in futility for the Centurion to order the merciful breaking of the legs.
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I hope Mr. Shirley has security. After Charlie’s death, we know they’ll go after anyone.
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What’s a word for a bundle of sticks that starts with F and ends in T?
Fascist.
… what word did you think I was asking about?
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A bundle of sticks, usually with an axe protruding from the end, is a ‘fasces’, and a person who utilizes such a device could legitimately be deemed a fascist.
I thought you were referring to a £@§§°+.
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A variation on the current joke translated from Mandarin seems to apply:
”What is it like living in an actual authoritarian nightmare?”
”Oh, can’t complain.”
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2. Villainizing Rabble-Rousers
It’s true! Look at how conservatives hate guys like Trump and Pratt. Nothing worse than a rabble-rouser.
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Yeah, those Conservatives really h@te that Nick Shirley guy. Are we learing yet, Lefties?
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Ooh, ooh, I figured out what the disconnect is!
K, we’re reading it as “rabble-rouser, a person who speaks with the intention of inflaming the emotions of a crowd of people, typically for political reasons.“
They mean, “rabble-rouser, speaker for the Morally Valid.”
You know, rabble, aka the proggy protest mob type, young and angry no matter if they’re ancient.
Actual members of the “rabble” only count if they say the Correct Words, though.
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That is why the rabble need someone enlightened to speak for them, obviously.
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What was Rincewind’s line, “gosh I just had a flash of prophecy, I know who will speak for The People until they get stuff lined out”?
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“I am not -rabble-! I am self-selected Elite!”
(every lefty on the way to the ditch at the hands of their masters)
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Ahh, the righteous young protestor leading the people against the evil regime. I can just imagine the soundtrack they have playing in their heads.
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‘Bastille Day’ by Rush? 😁
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“Do You Hear the People Sing?” from Le Mis?
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Yep.
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“Zombie” – Cranberries
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Benny Hill. In the end, it’s *always* Benny Hill
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You mean ‘Yakety Sax’ by Boots Randolph and James Q. Rich? That’s the actual title of the piece made (in)famous on the Benny Hill Show. 😁
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Oops, forgot to include a link:
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😘
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As I opined over at Mad Genius Club already, the fisking you gave them seems more than they deserve. Their prose reads like something barfed up by ChatGPT if it had the flu. (Which I also have just now, had it for a week and it’s not fun. But I won’t die [probably] so whatever doesn’t kill us only p1sses us off more.)
Fisking this type of regurgitation may be best handled with ChatGPT. A clanker vs. clanker situation, letting the droids duke it out looking shit up and argue from authority like this idiot. I’m sorry, Bob Altermeyer? who T.F. is that, and what mighty tome did he submit to the annals of History?
If I may mock the author a bit more, this specimen proudly proclaims in her bio she “has a background in web design and development, and she spends most of her spare time coddling her cats.” Clearly sufficient credentials to opine from authority upon the subject at hand. For f- sake. >:(
And apparently an entire following of similarly talented historians, browsing the comments I saw somebody briefly mentioned that personal freedom and the sovereignty of the individual is the exact opposite of Fascism (which of course it is, Fascism being a -collective- endeavor) and was immediately answered by a scholar who explained oh-so-reasonably that Individualism was of course completely Fascist and highly Problematic.
On reflection it might be a waste of ChatGPT tokens to argue with them. What can one say to a scholar who asserts with vast assurance that Individualism is dreadfully Fascist? You could say the sun rises in the East and sets in the West and they’ll tell you that’s Fascist.
They’re witch hunters. We’re the designated witches. Same as always. Bring it on, Karen. I feel confident in my spellcraft so you better bring you A game and all your little friends.
I feel our time will be better spent writing the stories we want to write, and letting these middle aged, cat-keeping Karens rave at each other about how Fascist we are.
I’m gonna go write some more Fascist romance now. Nerd gets the robot girlfriend, b1tchez. Super problematic.
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I feel confident in my spellcraft so you better bring you A game and all your little friends.
I cast .30-06, the M-1 Garand being an effective tool at making good fascists since the 1940s.
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I was thinking I could conjure “Nick Shirley” or maybe “Spirit of 4Chan” and find out who’s funding her. Seems pretty prolific and on-topic for a hobby blog.
Be pretty embarrassing if all her followers found out she’s gettin’ paid by the SPLC, wouldn’t it? Or China, like somebody else we know.
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Roll a natural 20 and cast Data Republican.
See how they like Them Apples, eh?
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Maybe the China begone text would work.
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I’d rather use a copper jacket for a Garand. Perhaps casting a .45-70? Or go older school and a .58 Minié ball?
Once I saw the shoutout for the “professor of Start Trek Economics” or something similar, I figured if the site was real, it wasn’t serious, at least not to normal people. They claim to get money <strike>laundered</strike> donated through Patreon.
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Star Trek, not Start Trek.
My ortho doc got called for emergency surgery, so I have to wait until next week to see him. Sigh. (Been on the other side. Hand surgeons don’t like coming in on a weekend. Amazing how much pain the initial jolt of Lidocaine* can bring.)
(*) I’ve learned later that Lidocaine can be buffered. Yet another ER visit and I got that treatment for a seriously busted lip. Lost the tooth, but the experience was a bit less kiss-the-ceiling.
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I think he means it in the sense of casting an attack spell. .30-06 is indeed a powerful spell. 🤣
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So’s a .45-70, and it’s all good for attracting ballistic carp. :)
(I’ve shot .30 caliber cast bullets, though it might have been in the heaviest .30-30 in Santa Clara County. It was built on a .458 Ruger #1 where the original owner induced a bulge. My friend the gunsmith rebarrelled it to .30-30 and called it the most boring rifle he had. It took work to get bad groups.)
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Funny you mention…
Once upon a time, some googoo-mojo loon was threatening me with all sorts of Wiccan WooWoo harm. (Rule of Three dude? Seriously?)
I dared him to try his best. Warned him I thought I was immune for reasons. If he were to successfully cause doubt, it then involved local statutes on self defense. Asked him if there was a spell to stop a bullet. Was he highly confident then?
For some reason, he left.
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OooOOoooooooOOoooooo!
An LLM AI trained in the art of the Larry Corriea fisk! Minster the hate!
nah. No one could ever touch -that-
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“An LLM AI trained in the art of the Larry Corriea fisk!”
A weapon of mass destruction.
But no, I must agreed that an LLM is not going to be able to summon that much abuse, sharpened to that fine a point. ~:D
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(sigh)
Is that post from the grave? Has the writer been beaten to a pulp and is on life-support in a hospital? Has all the person’s property been confiscated and given to a regime bigwig? Is the immediate family under arrest? No? Then your government isn’t fascist. You’re just a liar, seeing yourself as some hero when all you are is a weed sown in the body politic by an enemy.
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Amazing find. Like a pure, perfect soap bubble of ignorance. It’s up there with that Reddit post asking, “Why does the Right support the Empire from Star Wars? Don’t they know the Empire are the bad guys?” Absolute epistemic closure. No working theory of their enemy at all.
Manosphere term-of-art, distorted by a decade of Telephone and feminist hit pieces, applied here as a half-understood pejorative.
Every time you think men on the Right are going overboard with masculinity or being too harsh with the “soyboy” remarks, the Left comes out with another think piece titled “Why cardio is racist” or “My wife named our son after her ex-boyfriend, and that’s a good thing”, vindicating them completely.
So, yes, tying your own shoes is peak Alpha Male behavior these days, simply because the Left keeps ceding normal behavior to the Right as part of their purity spiral. (But actually. Remember how upset they got when Jordan Peterson told men to clean their rooms?)
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“Remember how upset they got when Jordan Peterson told men to clean their rooms?”
Yas, because basic personal hygiene is Fascist, don’t y’ know.
Hail Lobster!!! ~:D
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tl;dr: when almost everything is facist, facist is no longer a useful sort
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“facist is no longer a useful sort”
When nobody likes you and you’ve got nothing useful to say, scream “It’s MA’AM!!!” and kick over the store displays.
I was careful not to give her a free click. ~:D
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Well, they had to use something after they wore out “raaaaacist”. (Stacy McCain says it should be spelled with 5 ‘a’s.)
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It should also be spelled with multiple S’s and a few flying drops of spit. 😛
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Truedat.
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I think our host knows what the term “alpha male” means, and is making fun of it: I’ve seen the suggestion “when someone tells you they’re an alpha male, ask them if that’s a furry thing, it’ll drive them crazy” before. Can’t recall where — somewhere in an Instapundit comment thread would be my guess — but it’s definitely a “make fun of pretentious twaddle” thing.
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I should probably mention that the original concepts of dividing men into “alphas” and “betas” was not completely off-base (it’s pretty easy to think of exemplars, men who fit those definitions quite well), even though such reductionistic ideas are usually over-simplified (there are plenty of men who would be “alpha”, as defined, in some parts of their life and “beta” in others). But the way those terms are apparently being used now, as far as I can tell, have mutated over time and lost quite a lot of the value the original definitions had — and the “alpha male” term has almost become a stereotype of manliness rather than a useful definition. Again, as far as I can tell (I don’t end up in discussions where those terms get tossed around, and when I do hear about such discussions it’s usually at least two or three steps removed, so a lot of context has been lost in transmission).
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There are two kinds of people — those who divide people into two kinds, and those who don’t. 😛
Hell, the category of ‘alpha males’ ranges from aggressive obnoxious assholes to strong, patient, compassionate parental role models. And probably spreads out in other dimensions as well.
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Yeah, so was short (5’ 5 1/2”) skinny (117 lb) faked-his-age-to-enlist, almost-failed-the-induction-physical Audie Murphy an alpha male? Was he so before he enlisted? How about after he was discharged (medically, he wanted to stay in) as the most decorated combat soldier from the U.S. in WWII? Or was he so after that when he became a movie star?
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Note when he was working in Hollywood, Murphy had bulked all the way up to 145lb.
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(Like button’s still not working for me. Oh well.)
The manosphere’s original Alpha/Beta distinction was “good with women” vs. “not”, with the idea of emulating what Alphas did naturally. Eventually, those got broken down into finer-grained categories, such as “regular Joe” vs. “asocial nerd” vs. “male feminist”, capturing factors like social role, personality, and prospects for change.
Naturally, like every term that connotes status, these got used and abused to the point of unrecognizability. But underneath the dross is a half-decent model of male psychology that fills a gap left by the mainstream. (Analogous to the research on nutrition and fitness done by the gym bros, and with many of the same pitfalls.)
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Like most things people categorize it turns a multifaceted reality into a black and white binary question that tries to control peoples perception to only that binary choice. Given that it doesn’t reflect reality at all it inevitably creates lots of friction. The sad part is it is easy to fall into thinking that way because both Alpha and Beta describe quite accurately some behaviors of men… though less often women can be categorized with them. It doesn’t talk about how individuals can be broken up into dozens of behavioral categories all applied to different individuals and sometimes to one individual. Or how it can be situational and someone that acts Alpha in one social dynamic will act Beta in another and visa versa.
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I had recalled Sarah saying ‘ask them if it is a furry thing’, or posting such a meme just this last meme thread.
I also heard her statement as a deliberate joke.
Actual timeline and tree of spread of ‘alpha’ etc is more nuanced, and definitely has elements beyond my knowledge.
It was not simply owned by one group of men, and then misrepresented by another group.
Wolf studies are animal studies.
I know about Alpha-Omega in fanfic. I don’t know about it in Supernatural fic, because I mostly carefully avoided Supernatural fics with those tags. What I have heard is that said tagging and fashion grew specifically from some particularly insane elements of the Supernatural fandom. Then Pat Briggs transferred some of those ideas into more mainstream fiction, which I have actually read some of.
When a werewolf pack story has some extremely particular social world building, or magic system of social behavior, there is a reason to ask if this is about humans, or about idealized views of animals, totemism. et cetera. Which connects to ‘what is a furry’.
About twenty years ago, I learned some stuff about otherkin, by hearsay.
I pretty quickly came up with something like “I identify as a Necron, a Dalek, a Bolo, or one of Saberhagen’s berserkers.” Which I think kinda serves me a lot of the same ways that the furry stuff serves some of the furries. Which is to say, that we can probably list at least three or four /different/ ways that furry stuff serves some furries. No single compact theory explains all furries, as far as I can tell.
But, separate from Briggs, Supernatural, and furries, I definitely saw some elaborations on alpha theory from a man that I also know that Sarah has had some major differences with.
A fundamental problem with American society and politics right now is university trained idjits, and them going too far with pet theories or niche theories. Yes, you can curate a lot of stuff in journals that you have like 2k or 10k Americans, government funded Americans, publishing in. That does not mean that the ideas in those journals pass rhetorical tests of convincing a majority of Americans.
Almost all of the pipelines that the 20 to 45 year old cohorts have passed through in America, oversold them on the utility of involved constructions of theory and special words. Now, a lot of people also immediately or later rejected those claims as bullshit, and uninteresting. But we have been sold the model of the enlightened ingroup, who has the special understanding and words, whether we are chasing ‘education’ or do things like assign it to our own chat group.
There are a ton of chat groups with their own theoretical fashions, and some of them do not try to do an effective job of bringing everything back to Christ.
Alpha allows for science flavoring, and it fits well into some models that try to build these systems from base elements. IE, it is one way to try to do posturing that attempts to work on its own.
Western civ had a pretty good run (1) in the period where it officially was vaguely Christian flavored. A lot of bad stuff follows in the periods with a lot of Marxist flavoring.
I’m personally frightened of people, and fairly withdrawn. This is an irrational bias in my actual actions. Working on my own from theory, it was not clear to me that Christianity could not be practiced without fellowship. But once I made myself attend Church for a while, it became empirically clear that I had missed a very key element, and that fellowship is of fundamental importance.
This mistake I made, for decades, is an example of a mistake people can make.
So people like Obama can look, broadly, like they are deliberately being awful and making things worse. How to do the opposite of that?
Well, there are a lot of ‘traps’ in terms of trying to build one’s own opposing theory to socialism, or in terms of trying to be Christian, but listening to the opponents of Christianity on what that means, instead of trying to learn directly from Christians, and in searching for actual Christians.
I feel that the best possible defense for a subset of Alpha theory, would still be a trap of pursuing ideology or philosophy, for the more general audience that might be allergic to Christianities, or really oriented to the theater of the left.
I dunno.
(1) But also had a bunch of bad stuff, that we can compare some of to the socialism.
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Alpha Males are fans of Space:1999, right?
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One issue with wolf studies and the “alpha wolf” idea is that that’s very very artificial behavior, observed only in captivity. In the wild, if my memory is right, wolf packs tend to be family packs: father and mother, plus adolescent or adult children who haven’t yet found a mate and split off yet.
Which means I’m very very leery of the “alpha/beta/omega” tags on AO3, and any fic tagged with those is an auto-skip from me. Because it probably means it’s written by someone whose idea of how wolves (and other animals) behave is completely wrong, and they’re going to be projecting those ideas onto humans. Which makes as much sense as modeling human behavior based exclusively on studying prison population, then projecting those ideas onto animals.
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Correct.
If I have some human behavioral theory that has a very specific idea of what theta and phi would mean, there are three obvious explanations. One is that I am joking, and this is the most likely. The second is that I have simply gone insane. The third is that the theory accurately describes reality and fits other criteria of being a good theory. This last is vanishingly less likely than me going insane and describing human behavior inaccurately, while being convinced of accuracy.
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Like most of the real fascists of the left he seems to be great at projecting all their own faults onto the other side. What a loon!
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Lefties are loons, (not those who are left hand dominant, although I am rather suspicious of them and let’s not get started on the ambidextrous, I mean come on pick a hand) They are insane, even the seemingly logical ones. But they are all insane because even they know their ideas are hogwash, based on hogwash and wishful thinking, more are starting to turn away from the madness. Let’s hope it’s not too late.
The road to hell has always been paved with good intentions and liberal ideas.
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The North American Common Loon objects to being associated with these nutballs:
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Many (indeed, most) people are right-handed. Those of us who are not part of the majority are correct-handed.
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My late Father was left-handed and would say that being left-handed meant that he was in his right-mind. [Wink]
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So I looked up what Trump said about Starmer recently (windmilling the place to death), and the Mirror had an article purporting to find Trump’s comments puzzling.
Their interpretation felt very deliberate and studied.
fundamentally, I don’t really like calling the bird killers ‘turbines’, and so find windmill understandable, and a term I prefer.
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I call them pinwheels. Really conveys how un-serious they are. 😛
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Call them “bird blenders”.
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“Their interpretation felt very deliberate and studied.”
The Brit media right now is all acting like they’ve got armed Labour apparatchiks sitting in their offices, reading their copy before it goes out.
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I think their media, like ours, hires people from university programs.
It is not a class thing, the way they think of it, it is the voluntary association of perception.
A lot of their employees would have gone in for Labour, as the best way to double down on the managerial bet, or the professional bet, particularly for someone whose skills as a university trained specialist are not portable enough to compete for employment without a jobs program.
I was originally thinking of naming a hypothetical UK media employee who voted for Labour, and who is not well right now, Steve. But maybe that is too American, and I should suppose George instead.
Anyway, George has a plastic butter knife, so same difference.
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What leads you to think they don’t? 😁
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Oddly, we did have a round of fascist leaders: the Democrats. Who were absolutely horrified anyone would go against the norms they espoused, cracked down like the angry fist of god on anyone who raised the slightest disagreement with them, demanded absolute ideological purity, and were completely invested in the Single Great Leader image they always loved to prop up around their figure heads.
It’s all just projection of a failed ideology.
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On a semi-tangent off of the purity tests, I was following a discussion on how millennials were all told growing up if they didn’t get a degree they’d end up in the dustbin of history, and I wonder if that absolute uniformity of cultural experience is one of the reasons why Hollywood is dying so ugly.
I was telling someone else about the origin of the US’s Optimus Prime, as basically being an interpretation of a decorated US Marine Corps Captain. I though he was working as a roughjack at the time too, but I can’t find a reference to what he was doing between acting roles.
The thing is, that’s a very different life experience to a college grad, and I suspect if your writer and actor pools only come from the college grad base, you lose a lot of the ability to tap into that part of the pool of human experience.
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That was his brother.
Incidentally, my current message tone is Optimus Prime’s voice. Because I actually hear it.
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I remember his brother was the decorated retired USMC Captain, but was his brother also the one working as a rough neck when Peter Cullen was living with him?
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I THINK so? It sounds right, anyways.
Your broader point of having some monday friday broader experience stands, though, and that’s the video that makes me cry every time.
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That I can understand.
I was looking into the differences between how the character was done in the US and Japanese media, and apparently the Japanese voice actor did him in a much more typical Anime Hero style, so the franchise lasted longer, but also doesn’t seem to have had the same persistent fanbase that it has had in the US.
Peter Cullen’s reading is described as more “fatherly” which didn’t quite feel right for me. But thinking about the recent Pragmata discussion, and how men tend to have strong protective instincts, it finally hit me, Prime is not so much a classic hero, as he is a protector, someone who’s life’s desire is to see the next generation flourish is safety.
I think that’s why his character resonates so much, even as the franchise has been wobbly over the years. And, honestly, I suspect Hollywood having no real place or concept for that is probably part of why they’ve kind of floundered with it too.
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Not gonna lie, I got chills when he first did the Optimus Prime voice.
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It’s amazing, because I’m listening to him, and it’s “OK, nice voice, familiar, but– OH HOLY CRUD!”
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100%
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Hair on the back of my neck stood up at the line.
I wonder how many of us imprinted on the original Transformers™?
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Thanks to Automatic Singer’s Prime inspired series
and the Roku free streaming of any Transformers they can lay hands on, my kids are imprinting, too.
It’s become a regular event to hear screams of some Autobot or Decepticon’s name when we’re driving around.
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Well, that archive link is one of the dumbest things I’ve read recently. I need to better control my morbid curiosity because I read further and their entire site is like that.
The comments were the smug, self-righteous and self-congratulatory stuff I expect of leftists (Lord, thank thee that I am a blessed social justice warrior instead a bigoted right-winger).
If I were feeling generous I would advise them to look into Jonathan Haidt’s research that shows conservatives are better at modeling leftwing thought than liberals were at modeling rightwing thought.
Poor Brandon Sanderson. He is such a Mormie lib and this website still accuses him of writing fascist alpha males.
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I got automodded again.
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When did the new “Report” option appear?
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I’m sorry. WHAT?
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Sent a screenshot to mail of heat.
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mail of heat is not accepting you, apparently.
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Wunderbar. It hasn’t sent me back a message actually saying that, though.
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I’ll see if I can upload it on X.
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I was able to post it to your Facebook.
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I don’t have ANY emails. It’s weird.
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I have to say.. i went and found the article…. It was hilarious. I know that he is serious but Babylon Bee couldn’t have done a better job describing the left while pretending to blame the right.
Sigh.. I want to expand and jump on my soap box on this subject but frankly it’s to nuanced to do in less than a novella length exposition and I just don’t have the energy…
Short version Left insane, right only half as insane. May God help us all.
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Warhammer 40k bullshit quote about who determines sane.
The old version of the DSM was correct to say that sanity is a culture specific thing, a matter of functional in a given culture.
So, even if a silent majority of conservatives is not correct in your eyes, they can maybe still define sane by being the balance of the culture.
However, it does seem like now ‘almost everyone’ in American culture is a bit nuts and broken.
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Klaang and the Klankers?
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And I was today years old when I found out that Simon Templer is a fascist.
To quote the Princess Bride, “You keep using that word….”
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