I’m alive.  Sorry I didn’t post yesterday, but part of that “new plant” for the convention thing, forced on by change of hotel is that I missed seeing a lot of my friends. So after breakfast (we get concierge because Dan used to travel for work) I packed all my stuff and went in search of friends.

It was my intention to come back to the hotel room, finish packing and put in the promo post and stuff.  (Let me know if you have something urgent, because at this point I think it will wait till Saturday.)

Next thing I know Dan is waiting with all my stuff to go to the airport.

Now, the theme (bad theme) of THIS con was footwear.  My sandal strap broke in Charlotte airport while running for a tight connection.  To keep it from tripping me, I tied it.  The problem is it rubbed the back of my foot into a blisters and — by the time we got to Chattanooga — raw.

So we stopped at wallmart on the way in to get me footwear.  Being me, I bought a pair of nice sandals.  Fortunately I had an attack of “let’s have something else in case, and bought five dollar shoes.

Even the sandals were too hard on the foot (I should have bought slippers, or flip flops or SOMETHING) which is why you saw me limping around everywhere in the no-support, still rubbing my feet raw $5 shoes.

So, if you’re worried about how much I aged in a year, that wasn’t it.  It was more walking around on feet that were skinned and by the end of the con bleeding.

Which also affected my seeing people.

But also the whole hotel/convention center thing seemed to make it harder to find people.  Not a complaint, exactly.  I’ve been through this before.  After a while the flow of the con adapts to the hotel/accommodations, and we’re okay. And anyway, we won’t be there again next year (at least we’re not supposed to.  Fingers crossed.)

It’s just that in a way between the feet and the new plant it was a very weird con, and I kept getting tired (possibly the low level pain from feet, but, yes, I’m going to go to the doctor) and having to go to the room for a little while.

I did see everyone, in the end, except Laura Montgomery (!) I think, but didn’t have much time with anyone.

Gifts (!) this year include the autobiography of an ancestor, a stuffed mammoth that’s supposed to be Robert, and a nerf gun with which I shot the penguin.  (Evil Penguin.  One of the barflies.)

Differences noted: a lot more people discussing their indie business.  A lot fewer people chasing trad.

Things I missed: two teas and a dinner and a friend’s wedding reception. (Because I’d run out of energy by then.)

Everyone seemed to talk to my younger son, instead of me.

Les Johnson and I are in the early planning stages of a novel whose working title is The Princess and the Spaceman.  (You can call us sexist later.  These are particular people, hence the title.)

Now I’m back, working on an anthology (editing) a collection (going over edits) and finishing up Guardian.  Well, notionally at least.  Actually I got up about two hours ago, having defeated Greebo’s attempt to herd me into the office at 5 am, and Greebo’s licking my feet at 7 am.

I might write another post today.  Or not.

But I’m alive, and now I’m going to shower and catch up on work.

(Pets blog readers on their little fuzzy heads, and exits pursued by a deadline.)

Guys, Gals and Dragons (the Minotaur is here), I’m at Liberty con and it’s a busy morning.  I JUST don’t have the time to do the normal vignette and promo post.

I’ll do it tomorrow, okay?

Meanwhile, here’s a picture prompt for your improve pleasure:

The Church of Human Expansion by Harold Hamblet

Hale Bopp 1997. 39 cult members committed suicide believing the aliens in the comet would take them up and revive them…

People who aren’t firmly grounded in an established religion will believe anything and that’s one proof. A friend and I decided we should design a religion that wouldn’t require you to kill yourself at the cult leaders urging. In fact- suicide would be a grave sin. So if you wanted badly to believe in something we could take your money and worldly goods and do some good with it without harming you. We wanted it to be compatible with atheism. That is, an atheist could believe in Church goals and tenets without believing they were revealed by God. And- we wanted it to be compatible with most other religious beliefs, so you could join the church while not leaving your current church. Impossible! you say. We did it. You haven’t heard much about is because, well- if you’ve read some of my previous stories you’re aware my better half is a really good Catholic. Staying happily married to a good Catholic while being a prophet of a brand new religion isn’t going to happen… Now- my intro to The Church of Human Expansion™.

The Church has 3 prophets whose ideas are responsible for Church tenets and beliefs. Enrico Fermi, Robert Heinlein, and Fred Saberhagen. Robert Heinlein has a number of short sayings he wrote that are incorporated directly into Church beliefs. We’ll start with “If mankind is to survive, then for the majority of its’ existence the word “ship” must mean “spaceship””. A number of others also directly applicable. But that’s the most important one.

Enrico Fermi asked the question “Where are they?” This question was in response to the answer to a question he had asked one of his classes, “How many civilizations in this galaxy are more than a million years older than us?” Why this question? They came up with 50. Our galaxy is about 100,000 lightyears across. Once in space, travelling at 10% light speed is trivial and easily done. Generation ships for such travel are readily designable and simply an exercise in engineering. Suspended animation, well, still in the realm of science fiction. They answered 50. They wouldn’t all be on the other side of the galaxy, but randomly scattered. And some would be much, much closer. His point being, if they existed, they would be here by now and we would be them. To date, there is no evidence of their existence. And while the absence of evidence isn’t evidence- normally- think about the dogs that don’t bark in the night. After decades of searching for evidence, we have none. No radio transmissions, while ours are now more than 100 light years away. No light wakes from Bussard ramjets, which may or may not be actually buildable. Nothing.

If life naturally arises from the primordial soup, then we really should have detected it by now. There are two, and only two, universal explanation for The Fermi Paradox. The first, not even believed by most theologians of most religions, God created us and only us, and the galaxy is ours for the taking. The second universal explanation was provided by Fred Saberhagen in his writings- Berserkers are real.

Berserkers? A long long (LONG) time ago two races fought an interstellar war. Race 1 designed self replicating war machines and programmed them to destroy all life forms other than them. Race 2 designed some sort of weapon, presumably biological, that killed every last member of Race 1. After Berserkers were set loose in the galaxy. While Saberhagen was writing enjoyable and thought provoking science fiction, he was also a prophet warning us that Berserkers are coming and that we need to prepare.

So, what is required to be a member in good standing of The Church of Human Expansion?

1. In order for mankind to survive, the human race must expand into space. This is the one essential belief. Whether you come to believe this as God’s plan or because it simply makes sense is immaterial. The belief is not antithetical to any Earth religion I’m aware of, and is compatible with atheism.
2. Berserkers are real. When they become aware of our existence, if they aren’t already, they will head in force towards Earth to exterminate us. Not truly essential to believe in order to support the Church goal of expanding mankind into space. But a belief that can be held whether you believe Saberhagen’s stories were inspired by God, or whether he simply stumbled upon the truth while writing entertaining stories. Not antithetical to most religions.
3. Life is sacred and must not be taken for no reason or trivial reasons or because of theological or purely political disagreements. Does this mean the Church is against capital punishment? No- because if one person kills another for selfish gain or jealousy or whatever they are a danger to all, and if society determines they should die for it, it’s not a trivial reason. Of course, if Berserkers come and a cabal shares their goal, well…

Religion is much ignored in science fiction, and in most fiction for that matter. Arthur C. Clarke was an exception who incorporated religion in many of his works. Fred Saberhagen had the Templars in his Berserker books, a religious order devoted to defeating Berserkers wherever they appear. So if you want to have religion incorporated into your works, but aren’t satisfied with existing ones, feel free to use this one. Or if you have the necessary temperament to found a Church- this is yours for the taking.

Yesterday while traveling, I was subjected (eh!) to my husband’s watching movies on his tablet next to me.  Because the first flight was the bumpiest thing I’ve ever been on and I couldn’t read or write, I ended up watching a lot.  And I realized how pervasive the “messages” in entertainment are.

The first movie he watched was Black Panther and very weird the serious problems I had with it are none of the ones the left would think I would have with it.

Advanced civilization in Africa which keeps itself secret?  Sure.  Why not.  It’s science fiction (or at least comic book science.)  I sniffed (momentarily) at the goddess Matt thing because it ties in with the old seventies canard that Egyptians were black.  Not only is it obvious from their writing that Egyptians were mildly racist towards Nubians, but holly hell, we do have DNA analysis and it turns out they were way paler than we thought.  But I only sniffed A LITTLE because, well, “civilization starting by Egypt which was started by Atlantis” is a trope in the field.

The things that got me pissed off?  The villain’s background.  Yeah, sure, the US military makes people crazy.  The villain’s complaints about how black people are oppressed and colonized etc, which are dropped and believed by the other characters as a matter of fact.  Yes, the history of black people is appalling (and a lot of it inflicted by other black people, particularly in Africa where the results of the Zulu conquest left so many bones that some became hills.) However, if you wand to choose a place to be black in, choose the US.

Also for the people who threw themselves over the side of slave ships because it was better to die than to live in subjection.  Oh, f*ck that.  Is this the sh*t they’re teaching black kids in the US?  I’m sure people threw themselves over the side of slave ships in terror, and I’m neither going to defend slavery (DUH.  Libertarian, remember?) nor the slave ships, about which I read when I was ten or so, and which dwarf any horror movie for sheer death toll and awfulness.

However, that bullshit about throwing themselves because it was better than to live in subjection?  THAT is bullshit.  Slavery was common in Africa back then, when you lost a tribal war, or your relatives got into debt (much like Rome, guys.  We’re all descended from slavers and slaves and not very far off either) and killing yourself to escape it was not common.  This ties in to the lies told young black people in the US that white people invented slavery to enslave the black race, when in fact slavery is an ancient ill of humanity and the only thing different about the US is that we voluntarily freed our slaves, and made laws outlawing slavery.  This nonsense myth making, casually dropped in entertainment is what divides us.

BTW they might have thrown themselves overboard in terror because they knew nothing about the US and therefore assumed the stranger would be worse than the familiar.  And the familiar included the Dahomey who killed their slaves to coat the tombs of their kings in blood when the mood struck them.

Other casual bullshit that had me foaming at the mouth: all the fighters are women.

Seriously?  The aforementioned Dahomey had a regiment of female bodyguards who guarded their king.  This is probably what this nonsense is based on.  But actually that was largely a ceremonial/ritual regiment, in that they were all female, all beautiful and all virgins.

Doesn’t make any sense even in a high tech society for a fighting force to be ALL women.  Have women, sure, because augmented strength.  Be all women?  Oh, hell no.

Also the casually dropped mentions about how this guy was trained to destabilize/bring down regimes.  Seriously? He was? By whom?

Guys, since at least the seventies, and I suppose before, we’ve been thoroughly ineffective at any regime change. We could have spared some wars had we been better.  And spared the world a great deal of trouble.

In face, unless I’m wrong, the US (sole among nations) has rules against killing foreign leaders that are in our way.  And rules against interefering in other countries politics which get ignored (mostly by democrat presidents.)  So, oh, please and also pfui.

You mean the CIA which most of us knew was swallowing whole the lies about the soviet union’s population and strength is this super effective organization?  Sure.  Pull the other one, it plays jingle bells.

Oh, yeah, and Wakanda is going to work through the UN.  Holy sh*t.  They might be an advanced civilization, but how naive are they actually?

So those were my issues with Black Panther.  On the “black thing”?  Meh.  Yeah, the movie is racialist (which is different from racist, being pride of race more than discrimination against other races.)  That’s fine.  Having pride in race is not a problem, unless it slips into racism.

Take me, I’m a mutt.  I’m immensely proud of all humans throughout history.  But seriously, being proud of your ancestors, real or imaginary, has worked throughout history to put a floor under bad behavior.

“Do you want your great ancestors to be ashamed of you?” works, which is why ancestor worship is pervasive throughout history.

Oh, one other minor nit.  Having already met a T’challa (cute little thing), I want to say “Hollywood, black people in America did NOT need your encouraged to give their kids strange hyphenated names.  But whatevs. White people in America now do too, and in fact the minority of us who give our kids normally spelled names are feeling mighty unique these days.

Good movie.  I just don’t like the stupid lies we accept as throw away lines in this kind of thing, because they sink into the subconscious and become “everybody knows.” Watch for movies to casually refer to the Russians rigging 2016 for Trump, until everybody just accepts it, even though it’s obviously false.

The second movie Dan watched, which I THINK was Justice League 1 (I’m not sure, because I didn’t see it start.  Whichever the one had Batman and Wonder Woman) was obviously markedly inferior both in production and plot and all that, but …

Casually dropped in, Batman rants about humanity melting the poles. Completely unproven. In fact chances are any melting has nothing to do with humanity, since there was no ice on the poles long before we emerged, and hell, far less than lethal. There was no ice on the poles and life flourished.

But yeah, it’s delivered like “everybody knows” and like it’s going to kill us all.  Pfui.

That’s how they do it.  That’s how it works. That’s how so many lies have become “what everybody knows.”

We should ALL be very grateful, now and forever that the crazies in science fiction have reached the point they just unabashedly preach with no shame and absolutely 0 entertainment value.  (If you were a decent writer, my loves, you’d be far more entertaining and your poison far more effective.  Thank heavens, though, you’re just blinkered partisans and political dinosaurs.)

It’s far less effective than when they make good entertainment with poison pill lies dropped in like “everybody knows this” so that people assume it’s been proven and the mushy middle moves steadily left.

Heck, maybe Hollywood has just reached that point too, judging by Star Wars.  And this is very good.  Because what is in the open can’t sink to the subconscious.

Do write “Woke” movies and books, dear left.  We like it so much when they tank, their poison undelivered.

Trekonomics – The Nightmare Ends- by Amanda S. Green

The title of the post says it all. Perhaps, however, nightmare isn’t the correct word. Perhaps farce, or maybe even con, is more appropriate. After all, Trekonomics is a book that purports to be all about the economics of the Star Trek universe and yet the author does his best to avoid canon when it doesn’t suit his purposes and, when that fails, to pull out of thin air explanations for why what he says will happen.

I could continue looking at the book, chapter by chapter, but I’ll be honest. The author spends a lot of time saying basically the same thing. Like so many who hold out the socialist utopia, it is all hype and very little substance. So, we’ll fast-forward through most of it and hit the final “high points” of the book.

Let’s begin with this. Near the end, Saadia claims that if you believe Star Trek is about space travel, you are “taking it too literally.” Of course, he has to say that. Otherwise, none of his hand-wavium would make sense. Still, he isn’t to be deterred. He reminds us that, short of changes to the laws of nature, “highly improbable changes”, we will never have FTL travel. Nor will we have matter-antimatter reactors. Even though he doesn’t really address it, that probably means we won’t have replicators either. So how in the name of all that is holy are we supposed to reach this utopia he has painted for us?

According to him, we won’t, at least not if it is too far from our homes. He looks at history and says we are primarily a sedentary species, never travelling far from home. Exploration isn’t a “fundamental trait” of the human race. When we commute, we go the same route, rarely deviating, etc.

To say this is an oversimplification is putting it mildly. But then, what should we expect after the drivel we’ve gotten so far in the book?

If he says anything that is true, or close to it, it is the following:

Save for a few exceptions, the eccentric among us, we are stunningly incurious. As a species, we are mostly preoccupied with our day-to-day affairs, subsistence and such, and we free ride on the achievements of a few crazy ones.

The truth in the statement is that there are a number of people out there who are incurious. Others have bought into the sense of entitlement, happy to allow the state or someone else support them in the manner in which they would like to become accustomed. Yet, what Saadia doesn’t seem to realize is his own words condemn the Trek universe he has been championing for most of the book. After all, even though he says prosperity in the Trekverse is a universal sense of wanting to improve the state of life for all, aren’t they really simply happy to do whatever they want, knowing they will never need for anything? After all, there is no economy of shortcomings, of need, of limited resources. People don’t own the replicators, so they are relying on someone else – on the state – to provide them food, clothing, everything the replicators can manufacture for them.

Hmmm, has he ever heard of “the state gives and the state takes away”?

Saadia is also the master of the understatement without either recognizing or understanding the “why” of what he writes:

With development and the considerable improvements in standards of living brought on by the Industrial Revolution, the number and proportion of people involved in research and development has shot up.

My first thought as I read the above quote was “DUH”. Of course, the number and proportion of people shot up. They had more opportunities to join the research force. They weren’t having to go out and hunt for food or grow the crops. My second thought was that the nerds of the world could finally do what they wanted to do, what they were good at.

Where I really have the urge to reach through the computer screen to shake Saadia is when he climbs back on his soap box and begins his passive-aggressive bullshit about space travel and how he really doesn’t want to discourage the fanboys. But, he says, why don’t we use those resources instead to “to lift a billion people out of poverty?” Who knows how many Einsteins or other great thinkers we might have if we did. But even if we don’t find another Einstein, surely we’d get “30 or 40 million more engineers or programmers” from those we uplifted.

Riiiight.

And pigs will fly then too.

Saadia’s ability to say, on the one hand, that the vast majority of people would rather have folks do for them and then, on the other hand, tell us we should find a way to pull a billion people out of poverty so we might – MIGHT – get additional engineers, etc. blows my mind. How in the hell are we supposed to pay for this? Who decides who gets the money and how much? He never answers the question. Instead, he uses it to show that Star Trek had it all backwards.

Blink.

The Star Trek canon portrays the advent of the so-called new world economy as a consequence of the invention of the warp drive. . . I would go even further and say that faster-than-light travel and interstellar colonization are the most uneconomical of all imaginable endeavors for any civilization. You can’t finance them like the Dutch or English merchants financed ships in the seventeenth century. It won’t make you rich. There is no silver or sugar, no prized fruits from the pepper plant (Piper nigrum) to bring back from Sirius or Wolf 359 (not to mention that useless hellhole otherwise known as Mars).

My head is starting to hurt. Why would there be no “silver or sugar”, or something even more valuable to be found out in space? Why would we not be able to find resources we could use and that would propel even further innovation and invention? When the first explorers left Europe to find what existed on the other side of the sea, they didn’t know what they would discover? For all they knew, there really were dragons waiting to eat them. Saadia also assumes that the governments of the world are the only ones who would be able to fund such explorations. I look around now and see entrepreneurs like Elon Musk funding their own space programs. Who is to say there won’t be more like him in the future?

A species needs to achieve economic escape velocity first in order to spread through interstellar space.

He can almost get away with this comment. Except he overlooks the need to discover resources to replace the ones we have exhausted here on the Earth or the need for new places for humanity to expand to because we keep having babies (No, I don’t mean we are heading toward over-population anytime soon, not even in the next few generations.) It is just that Saadia makes these absolute statements and not once does he give solid arguments to support them.

Enough already with the space colonization nonsense! If anything, it is an expression of defeatism. It implies that this is not working out, “this” being Earth and the humans who live on it. It is an old pioneering fantasy. Let us build some kind of galactic Mayflower and leave this wretched and sinful place. It is as facile as it is misguided.

Now, how many of you read the above and didn’t get a little angry? In Saadia’s world, exploration is admitting defeat. He truly doesn’t take into consideration any of the very valid reasons why we might want, much less need, to expand beyond this world. Thank God, the early explorers didn’t believe as he did. Where would we be today if they had?

Here is the bottom line – or perhaps the punch line –for the book: “So no, the Vulcans are not coming. We are the Vulcans. Or rather, we must become the Vulcans—stoic, rational, altruistic. To me, that is the main lesson of Trek.”

Thank you, but no. I don’t want to become the Vulcans who turned their back on all that make humans unique. I’ll be a Ferengi or Klingon, even a Romulan or a Bajoran.

Saadia is quick, in a manner of speaking, to remind us of the Vulcan saying, “Live long and prosper”. In that greeting, “prosper” doesn’t mean gain personal wealth. The Vulcans are above all that evil capitalist schtick. To a good Vulcan, prosperity comes in the forms of accomplishments and service. It is the sort of prosperity “that arises from the cultivation of the mind rather than from greed, that antiquated and vulgar practice.”

So, if we are to go forward into the future, to head into space and to rise to the world of the oh-so-wonderful Trekverse, we must become walking, talking automatons, willing to stoically give to everyone else without expecting anything in return. Hand over your humanity, your emotion and your competitive spirit. March in lock-step with your fellow Federation citizen. The government will take care of you. It will give you a nifty replicator. You too can have everything you want, as long as it isn’t unique or too different from what your fellow citizens want or need.

Nope, if that is what being a citizen in the Federation entails, I don’t want to go there. Citizenship in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers universe is more enticing. At least the service there has a reward – citizenship. Either that or I want to live outside the Federation, a starfaring tramp steamer, a compass and the freedom to do what I want and go where I want is a lot more appealing than being part of the Stepford Federation.

I’m not a stranger to political violence.  And I have no interest in it.

Sometimes I feel like I must be, for sure that my life is a novel, and a very well foreshadowed one at that.

Black September and the Munich massacre which marred the first time I was aware of the Olympic games (which provided something to watch on TV through the first dreary summer when my brother went away with friends and I was left to my own devices for amusement) foreshadowed September Eleven.  And I’m hoping very hard that my youth of turning a corner and finding yourself in the middle of a melee, of bomb threats and attacks on insufficiently supportive establishments, of riots and party headquarters burning is not a foreshadowing for the next few years.  Because I’m old, I’m tired, and I can’t be having with that.

Yeah, Maxine Waters is not only crazier than a shithouse rat, she’s also at best reality-adjacent.  Anyone who has had the dubious pleasure of listening to her questioning someone or expounding on something knows that the world inside her head has only a casual resemblance to the real one.  And that she’s got parallel and irrational images of how the world works, which make no sense to anyone with even a modicum of attachment to oh, physics, history or psychology.

But then… but then there are the people who elected her.  And the people who seem to be doing their best to follow her directive to harass and attack anyone who is in the administration or even voted for it and to attack ICE agents.

There have been a bunch of unreported incidents by ANTIFA which is named in the best tradition of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic: three words, three lies, as it was more Soviet than anything, democracy meant that everyone voted in unison for the approved party, and it was not a republic but a dictatorship.) At least the supposedly anti-fascist Antifa only has two words to lie with.  But that a group of street thugs who beat up everyone who agrees with them and who block access to legitimate businesses and try to keep speakers from the public that they don’t want the public to hear can call themselves ANTI fascist with a straight face is one of the great ironies of our time.  I’m waiting for them to start wearing brown shirts and burning books, while still screaming the Nazis are those innocent people they beat up.  Then they will have gone their length.

And everyone is hardening their defenses.  Everyone.  Yes, even minor players.

So what gives?  What are they doing?  And more importantly, what DO they think they’re doing.

What we’re seeing is the run up to World War One, this time in one society.

We’ve had almost 100 years of (uneasy, true) peace, while the sides drifted further and further apart.  As in the run up to WWI there was a surface narrative of peace and harmony.  In the same way that German youth and young Englishmen visited each other’s countries on vacation, and read the same books, for the last 70 years of our uneasy cold civil war, there was a surface peace and understanding.

The problem is that it was never true.  In the same way that behind the scenes England was growing a greater and more cohesive empire and freezing out Germany, the left had taken all the means of mass communication.  What a friend calls the Mass-communication-entertainment industrial complex was taken, and taken early and slowly ratcheted left until the “consensus reality” was left.

Those of us who disagreed; those of us with a different vision of the world and different thoughts on history (or, hell, science, or psychology, or … anything) were frozen out.  We didn’t exist.  What “everyone knew” was left.  And most of us were so isolated, we might not believe the left in our field of expertise, but would accept the consensus reality in other things.

But because there was no check on it, it was all the left’s version all the way, and because the left’s way of interpreting things is a complete internally consistent (used to be) hermetically sealed system that allows no dissenting though in (which is why it fills mass graves every time) their complete dominance of every narrative medium from movies to paintings, to school books, education, books written for entertainment and even songs, left them free to tilt ever more and more away from reality.

This is the only state of affairs that allowed party conversation and polite social chatter about what a moron Ronald Reagan was even while he was, in action, upending every shibboleth of the left previously accepted world wide: things like controlled prices and salaries, the primacy of unions, etc.

If Europe had been half awake and not listened to our journalists (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the left) but had instead looked at the economy taking off, or the Soviet Union folding like a cheap suit, they would be in much better shape now than they are.  But they didn’t because the disease was more advanced there, and the tradition of listening to credentialed people is much stronger there. Still and all even here the industrial narrative complex kept the idea that Reagan’s economy was a result of Carter’s actions (a narrative so laughable it could only be maintained by an all prevalent and massive top-down media) green enough that Obama was elected.

But by the time of Obama, they couldn’t burnish the narrative enough to make him seem like a great president.  Nor could they sell us into Summer of Recovery xn even though they are still trying. They kept just enough cred, and burned it all — and all the fraud apparatus too — to elect Obama a second time.  Which was stupid, because it only increased people’s disgust. Because the world had changed.

Like the pre-WWI generals locked in their war rooms and referencing the same old books, they planned the upcoming victory, unaware that technology and the world were making it impossible.

While the left not only filled every nook and cranny of twentieth century “narrative industries” to the point the only way a conservative could work in one of those was under deep, deep cover, the engineers made the internet.

The left didn’t even know it really had any serious opposition left.  You can’t blame them too much. Even those of us who were very opposed and very disgusted kept it polite in public and treated them as retarded children who couldn’t take opposition.

Would it have made any difference if we’d talked back, say 30 years ago?

I doubt it.

You see, leftism is as much as anything else a religion.  The crazy Marx with his vision of the future created an entire narrative from paradise (pre-capitalism, i.e. it never existed, guys, not even as apes.  Apes, as we now know, trade) through fall into capitalism to eventual paradise again, where the New Man (what used to be called the Soviet Man) will be so altruistic and communally oriented that a government isn’t needed.  (Like the peace of Islam, there’s only one way to obtain that, and no.  Just no.  Worldwide species extinction is as fantastical as the idea of that primordial paradise.  Humans are humans, and someone will survive.  I’m just not interested in letting them send us back ten thousand years.)

You hear it in the talk of the left — particularly the rather intellectually inbred fourth generation, who ate the pap the older people fed them and never had an original thought in their lives — stuff like calling us “reactionaries” (when they’re the ones in power, and have been for a long time, and the ones knee-jerk reacting) and talking about “the future” as belonging utterly to them, and the arrow of history, as though history were the chart in their book, with an arrow beneath.

Their faith doesn’t align particularly well with reality.  For instance there’s the whole thing of them talking about us — always — as though we were the ones in power, when they have all the gatekeeping positions and all the contacts.

This dissonance has required them to make up invisible monsters that give us all the power: Patriarchy (a laughable idiocy in America and weak everywhere in the west.  While they refuse to see it in the Middle East and Latin America where it actually exists in spades.) Micro aggressions.  White privilege (which is so strong that it gives an edge to concentration camp survivors.)

All the while they refuse to admit the real privilege: Leftist privilege.  The fastest way to rise in the narrative fields is to be lefter-than-thou.  Because they’re in charge and that’s how the system is setup, so they can stay in charge.

Unfortunately this has created their isolation.  You see, every song, every movie, ever history book, every fictional book, assures them they’ll win.  They know that “the people united shall never be defeated.”  They also know that though held back by patriarchy, racism, sexism and all the micro aggressions, the people really are with them.  HAVE TO BE, because they’re ideology of the future, and history’s arrow points to their paradise.  Every book, movie, etc. says so either subtly or openly.  So they KNOW.  Everybody knows.

Only lately they’ve been suffering injuries to their world view.  It started with Trump’s election.  Or rather it didn’t, but that was the one strong enough to hit them in the face.  The rest hadn’t made it past the faith.

They’ve tried to deny it and invalidate it by every means possible.  The crazy Russia thing is more an attempt to restore their certainty and peace of mind than anything else.

But reality keeps hitting them in the face.  The #metoo thing designed to get Trump (who they’re still sure is some sort of uber-rapist, despite all evidence to the contrary.  Sure, a philanderer but a much cleaner one than Clinton and certainly consensual.  However awkward, his definition of hypergamy in females is right.  Turns out if you’re rich enough, a large number of women will really let you grab them by anything.) ended up hitting a lot of their own icons and then went out of control showing the vapid idiocy of current feminists.

They bring out the whole made up (in the sense the worst stuff happened under Obama) outrage over “children in cages” and the narrative doesn’t take.  Not amid the people who don’t do social media.  (It might in fact have hardened them against the left.)  They tried the Russia thing, but it’s coming apart in their hands. They lift every minor victory up as transformative.  They keep waiting for the mass arrests and concentration camps to show that Trump is just like Hitler, while instead the great goof galumphs around getting the economy to actually recover and thereby exposing all of Obama’s venal incompetence for the world to see.  And he’s doing better in foreign relations than the holy doctrine of apologizing to them little brownz people which should have worked, it should.

They’re going insane.  It’s not just their dominance (and it is that too.  All the celebrities went all in for Hillary and they still failed.)  It’s their world view, their sanity, their certainties about the world they live in.  They’re sure there’s some clever and dirty trick being pulled that makes their stuff not work and the “stupid” non Marxist stuff work.  There has to be.  Otherwise they’d be wrong.

It is into this soil that crazy Maxine (I first typed it Marxine) Water’s exortation to violence has fallen.

And it’s taking hold, because well… violence is the obvious response to the unbearable internal pressures.  Win or lose, a real fight is something they can grasp.  And then, you know, all their training and entertainment and the smartest people on their side KNOW they’ll win easily.

So Occupy Wall Street failed.  Their attempt to “start the seed” to show the “oppressed” it was time to rise up didn’t make it.  It must have been that they weren’t loud enough.  So now they have the antifa, to show the oppressed that they can break heads, and it’s the time for revolution.

Among my crazier left contacts — and there’s a lot of them.  I work in science fiction — “revolution” has become a more popular word than ever since the sixties.

They know they can win.  They have all the plans. They want this war to start already.

And our side?  Oh, heavens.  How many of us have daydreamed about a second American Revolution? The saner of us confined it to our dreams and fiction, but there’s a reason The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is my favorite Heinlein, and I’m aware of it.

Now it looks like the two sides have had enough of talking and that “the blood on the streets” will be impossible to avoid.

Will our side win?  Possibly.  Even likely, given that we have most veterans with us.  Will it be a good thing?

At this point the world of Starship Troopers is a best case scenario after the confrontation.  And it wasn’t … precisely… a free world.  Stable sure, but not the same way we’ve enjoyed it the last hundred years or so.

The worst case scenario looks like all those things that the left keeps accusing us of being:a world in which what you can do, think and be is determined by your circumstances at birth.  A world in which the eccentric, the Odd, the creative is very hemmed in.  A world none of us wants.

And possibly the most likely one, since the people who will get at the head of the movement have a good chance of being types attracted to absolute power, and also, frankly, not only they but us (those who survive) will emerge on the other side of this will be — justifiably — suspicious of the left and every cause and group they championed and sanctified.  And we’ll be angry.  Really angry.  Blinding fury doesn’t begin to describe it.

In this moment of silence, before we all go over the trench and the shooting starts, there’s time to stop.  My inner sensors tell me the conflagration is somewhere between two months and a year away (it’s unlikely to happen in winter.  But it could surprise me.  My guess is if their blue wave fizzles, they’ll go truly, bizarrely insane.)

There’s still time to turn back, to re-examine assumptions, to realize that maybe they don’t have the mass of the people with them, and that this will end badly for everyone, but particularly for them.

But of course, I can’t reach them, and the ones who do skim this blog only do it till offended.

So, here we are.  It could go off any minute.  Do we have any real coffee left, not that chicory stuff?  And does anyone want a last cigarette?

I can hear the cannons in the distance.

Guns in Mexico by Foxfier

If anybody here doesn’t know– the border towns are getting rather ugly. Mostly it’s a matter of gangs moving in and throwing their weight, which I’m sure is a great comfort to the hundreds dead just across the border from one of the lowest crime cities in the USA….

Obama rather famously tried to blame the violence on guns. As an excuse to remove guns from folks up here, of course. Even though we have more guns, and less violence. It’s almost like it matters who has the guns….

I just ran into an article that makes it clear this is a golden example of why they always say “guns,” rather than looking at if it’s possible to have legally owned guns and how common that is.

(Warning, Borderland Beat is basically just translating with a little commentary, and some of the folks there see nothing especially wrong with cartels, homicide and all. And don’t get me started on the comments.)

The current number of registered arms in the hands of private individuals is only 3, 153 in the entire country of Mexico. The Ministry of National Defense has only granted 68 such licenses of that type to 2016, but, in exchange programs during the sexennium, it has collected more than 93,000 weapons of war, mainly delivered by heads of households; another 28,000 weapons were secured during arrests.

That is the total number of weapons; further down it mentions there were only 47 authorizations for individuals to have a firearm at home. So three thousand, one hundred, fifty eight legal weapons.

I’m pretty sure that the little gun shop my folks use sells more guns than that each year, and it’s one of at least three in that town, less than five miles from a town with a few more stores. The entire state of Washington hasn’t broken 300 murders since they started keeping stats; the closest it ever came was back in ’94, with 294. In contrast, Chihuahua Mexico hit 90 in the first 17 days of this year. They are a smaller population, in a larger area. Now it’s true, El Paso had record-challenging murders in 2017 as well–thirty eight. Did not break the 2013 record of forty three. Oh, and that’s the county– the city had 19.

All of Chihuahua has fewer legal firearms than some perfectly normal hunters do. Heck, do a quick cast-around of the relatively young, relatively low income geeks in my husband’s D&D group will probably net more than 30 weapons.

Go figure, crime flourishes when a gun is overwhelming, unanswerable force…..

There are moments of strange unreality, when something someone says aligns with my memories and I go “I’m not crazy, after all.”

(Mind you, this is for a limited definition of “not crazy” considering I woke up with the following sentences running through my head “It’s like wearing pants. No one likes it, but it’s necessary.”  And no, I have absolutely no idea where that came from, either.)

In this case I was reading on São João, aka St. John, who is the patron saint of the city I come from and whose celebration is a very big thing indeed, including dancing in the city streets all night and lighting bonfires as well as launching lighted balloons (not sure why that one.  But dad liked that part.  A lot.  The weeks before would be spent designing the frame work, picking the onion paper to go over it, etc. Had the man been born in the US he’d have been a rocketeer.)

The festival is ridiculously badly advertised, though it should be a touristic high point.  At least now most of Europe knows about it, but in the seventies and eighties, we were often confronted with tourists who had come to town for a week and had no clue what this was and why this was happening.  In the seventies sometimes they thought it was some kind of a revolution, before realizing no one goes to a revolution with giant plastic squeaky hammers and bunches of herbs which is what people carry while forming lines and dancing/running through the city singing.

At some point the dime would drop and you’d find tourists looking incredibly bewildered but very happy, along the lines of “Wait till I tell my friends this” joining one of the lines and attempting to sing the (either religious or incredibly off color or sometimes both) songs.

I don’t exactly miss it, but the smells in the air in June remind me of it, as does the “body temperature” air.  And I’d meant to be setup enough to host a barbecue for my friends this year, which didn’t happen.  So I was looking it up on line.

And came across a reference to how in the Middle Ages St. John’s feast was considered incredibly important and also “Christmas in June” which means it ported over a lot of the same traditions.

Now, look, São João has any number of really strange traditions — yes, stranger than hitting each other on the head with plastic hammers that squeak, or rubbing herbs under other people’s noses with or without their permission — there’s jumping the bonfire together (or alone for particularly daring teen males), there’s staying up till the sun comes up and then having cafe au lait and buttered toast, because it’s tradition.  There’s giving each other pots of basil (manjerico) which is not used for cooking, in Portugal as a sign of good wishes for the new year.  (I love cooking with basil, but the smell always takes me back.)  There’s poetry contests over basil (my brother usually wins a couple run by local newspapers, as well as putting verses in the vases of basil he gives everyone, from my mom to old work mates, to his wife.

But the one I remember from childhood, and which was bigger in my parents’ time, I never heard mentioned anywhere outside my own head, at least not by anyone who didn’t grow up with me or someone who hadn’t experienced it.

You made a nativity for São João.  It was done with different figures, because the indoor nativity was often porcelain and expensive, while the outdoor one was often made of the cheapest clay and crudely painted (but charming.  I wish they’d sell those in the tourist areas, instead of the “penis as everything” trend they seem to think pleases the tourists.)

It also had more figures.  Yes, elaborate nativity sets here have camels, etc.  But “Cascata” sets in Portugal had EVERYTHING from houses to vendors (sometimes in Medieval Portuguese clothing) to… everything.

A Cascata was like your very own construction project where you could make an entire miniature landscape.  It was like a nativity crossed with miniature railroads (which some cascatas included.)

The very religious would have a sort of “life of Jesus” theme interlaced in their constructions.

The rest of us went a little goofy on things like, let’s make a very large landscape.

I would build the mountains a month in advance, and cover them with moss which I watered till it took (because it looks like grass in miniature) and I no longer remember if I built an artesian fountain or just planned it.  I know boys in the village often had real running rivers with boats on them, etc.

So for us it was a great mid-summer geek fest.  And I didn’t know where the tradition came from and now I know it’s the whole “Christmas in June” thing.

Oh, and see that dish with money next to the saint statue?  The thing was to brandish an image of the saint and say “Penny for the saint” when people admired your cascata.

I don’t know.  I’m now sad my kids didn’t get the geek fest of building entire landscapes for a mid summer festival, and I might find an excuse to teach the grand kids to do this.  Because our sort of people just loves that, and getting really elaborate on it consumed the first half of summer holidays and kept kids out of trouble.  Also you learned interesting things, like how to build a well/fountain with a little plastic bucket and some tubing.

Oh, and next year, maybe I’ll be moved-in settled enough to have a barbecue.

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com.  One book per author per week. Amazon links only.-SAH*

FROM DOROTHY GRANT:  Shattered Under Midnight.

Raina escaped to Freeport with a tour booked under a stolen ID, and a plan to lose herself in the city. Instead, she found a city in revolt, and now both sides are after her to control the alien gifts engineered into her DNA.

Her only ally is an offworld investigator trying to get to the bottom of the explosive mix of on-planet and alien politics… but his secrets are even deadlier than her own.

From the back alleys of the souk to the depths of alien ruins, they’re now in a desperate fight to stop the revolution before everything is lost!

FROM J. D. BECKWITH:  Horizons Unlimited: Volume 1: A Space Adventure Anthology.

HORIZONS UNLIMITED

Matter conversion technology—Matt-Con—has broadened the scope of mankind’s existence. It has opened up the real possibility of viable colonies on other planets in our solar system, and even space itself. Anywhere matter can be captured or energy from the sun can be felt, the possibility of expanding human habitation exists.

In this volume:

Quicksilver

The space station Chariot of Helios—on its way to Mercury to become a power collection station for Earth’s growing need for energy to power matt-con tech—encounters a strange anomaly that threatens ship and crew.Escaping Aurora

The sudden destruction of mankind’s first atmospheric terraforming platform leaves three unlucky exonauts struggling to survive in the skies of Venus aboard a cobbled-together airship. Meanwhile, the commander of the space station above battles obstacles that might keep her from rescuing her stranded husband and crew in time.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: open

Hollywood: “Take what we give you, and shut up!” – by the Phantom (reblogged from his blog) with commentary by Sarah

In the latest in a series of science fiction fandom witch burnings, we have this article in Forbes magazine:

Kathleen Kennedy Is Still The Best Person To Make ‘Star Wars’ Movies

The reason I post this apologia to the Disney gods is the virulent language in it. It reads like a comment at Vile 666 or Floppy Cameltron. Or maybe Jezebel. Emphasis and colours mine.

[And bracketed comments mine.]

Rumors surfaced this week that Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy might step down from company leadership in the aftermath of Solo: A Star Wars Story’s box office failure. This comes amid rampaging racism, sexism, and other extreme toxic behavior from a segment of mostly male (and mostly white) fans who’ve taken to harassing female actors and artists for existing. This is all part of a larger bigoted backlash of complaints against Star Wars for incorporating people of color and other types of diversity into the previously predominantly white male storytelling.

[You know, it’s very weird that they bring in the same thing every time.  “Racism and sexism” — even though I’ve seen absolutely zero comments about having a black character. (Understand, okay, I don’t have a dog in this fight.  At the risk of being burned at the stake, I never took to Star Wars.  You see, when it came out I was reading science fiction, and had explored ideas far more threatening and interesting than Star Wars. And I’m not visual, so the special effects did nothing for me.  I’d seen better in my head.) Zero, zip none.  And all the problems I’ve heard about the female character have to do with her springing up fully formed and perfect, like Athena from Zeus’ head and therefore us not seeing her struggle up in a hero’s journey kind of way.  The other problems I’ve heard come from the left’s obsession that I call “no one is good, Mr., no one is clean.”  They broke up marriages, made people miserable and had kids turn out bad. Look, I’m not a novice at this story telling thing.  Nihilism doesn’t sell.  It just doesn’t.  It can for a while — Game of Thrones — given enough push, but if it continues to be all “no one turns out all right” it just crashes.  And Star wars didn’t start out nihilist but as a thing of hope for the future.  They could ponder that.  They might even be able to figure out why they always go to nihilism and darkness (my guess?  to soothe the hatred and envy that propelled them to a philosophy that hinges on envy and makes it a virtue. But hey, I could be wrong. They could be doing it to sound “intellectual.”) However, examining their actions is so horrifying and scary they prefer to cast their sins upon the dissenting scapegoat — in this case the whole public — and send us out into the desert as “racist, sexist” (did they forget homophobic this time?) I don’t know about you but when you are that afraid to look upon yourself in the mirror, it’s because you know a monster will stare back.- SAH]

That’s the first three sentences. Yes, you read that right, Solo, or Soylo as they are saying over at Ace of Spades, is tanking -hard- at the box office, and the reason is… the audience is a bunch of toxic racist fanbros. Yep. Movie tanks, blame the -audience-. Oh, and shut up!, because ain’t nobody got time for none of your “extreme toxic behavior.”

[It’s amazing how many “racist fanbros” there must be. I mean, to make a box office hit it takes a broad, broad segment of the population.  If Hollywood really thinks that many of us are “racist fanbros” maybe they should decamp our shores and go make movies in some headland of enlightment like Cuba, or… or the United Arab Emirates.  No?  I know, I know, Venezuela.  They can be paid in flamingo steaks!- SAH]

Amazing in Forbes magazine, right? But wait, there’s more! The next three paragraphs:

Mindless screams of “keep your politics out of my entertainment” abound from that corner of fandom ignorant of the most basic facts about what the films say and represent (the Empire’s designs and titles were heavily influenced by fascism and Nazi imagery, the Ewok uprising was a veiled commentary about the Vietnam War, and the entire concept is about rebelling against authoritarianism and fighting back against oppression and slavery).

[Yeah, and what Hollywood should ask itself is why the “racist fanboys” didn’t mind it then.  No, please, don’t tell us that it’s because they didn’t catch on.  Before Kathleen Kennedy was out of diapers (I have no idea how old she is, but she is still in mental diapers, so roll with it) and before I’d left college, I’d read analysis of the politics in Star Wars written by people on all sides of the political spectrum who were fans of the movies.  (BTW if people on our side are right, then the Empire was actually supposed to be the evolution of the USA.  Yeah, this is me rolling eyes so hard.  Yeah, people saw those politics.  They were also glad that Lucas, like a great many artists before and after him was lousy at transcribing his political idiocy into movie, so what came across was often the opposite of what he meant.)
Why do they assume we don’t see politics in the original? Look, political stories on both sides have succeeded and become beacons in the field.  The Foundation, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and a long list of others.  We saw the politics, thank you so much, and something from politics we didn’t like might not be our favorite, but it might still be cherished.  Why?  Because there was a story there, and we LIKED stories.  That’s why we read.
Any explanation of failure that says it failed because we’re racist and sexist ignores the basics of what is ultimately the most open of the genres.  Guys, we like stories about people with many sexes, or none.  (One of my favorites, whose name and author I keep forgetting because I read it in Portuguese in 9th grade where it was called, if I recall “Os Duros” the species was energy beings with three sexes.  Another favorite growing up was The Left Hand of Darkness. My very first published work had a sex-shifting elf. I’m sure I’m neither rare nor unusual among SF/F fandom.)  Some of our favorite characters are reptilian aliens. “Racism, sexism” is a lousy explanation.
Yes, it’s one that Hollywood — and publishing — have told themselves for a long time.  Outside Baen it’s hard to publish books with gay characters — in my experience — because the rest of publishing is terrified of invisible homophobes in the audience.  It’s hard to publish characters of a different race — in my experience — because publishing is convinced flyover country is racist.  I’m sure despite the fact that EVERY ACTION HERO published in the last ten years is a woman they think we’re sexist too.
It might really help — really — if instead they looked at the screeds disguised as books that they publish, and realized that’s what makes them tank, not unusual characters, etc.
And Hollywood, and Ms Kennedy, that goes double for you.  When you publish pictures like this:

you think you’re making a bold statement.  And you are.  It’s just not the one you think you’re making.
You think you’re standing up against “racists” in the field and telling them to shut up.  What you’re actually doing is telling us you’re twelve and your version of feminism is to paint a sign saying “No icky boys allowed.”
That’s fine, but I think we found the sexist. It’s you!
Real feminism, and real fight for equality does not consist in excluding a sex.  Only hysterics are so terrified of men that they must exclude them in order to be “equal.”
Let’s put this way, woman, you just insulted half of your audience and told them they’re not wanted.  You also just displayed SUCH stunning levels of immaturity and virtue signaling that even women with half a brain know your movies are going to be ham-fisted preaching fests, the kind we don’t like in church, much less in a theater we pay to enter. In what world does this end well? It might feel good, but do you want to do that? Perhaps a little less self-indulgence and a lot more trying to engage the audience instead of screaming at them? – SAH]

This is the same group of fans, remember, whose entire rant is rooted in their own personal politics and a desire to see their personal preferences projected onto the screen while nobody else is entitled to the same right or representation. That enraged reactionaries want to deny everybody else equal representation while demanding their own right to be heard and obeyed is hardly new or shocking, of course. These types of vulgar fans always existed, because fandom is just a portion of the population as a whole, and the population always includes angry self-entitled bigots.

[I find it hilarious they call people like me, who want to abolish as much of the state as possible, and live in never-before-tried freedom reactionary.  But hey, they also call people like me racist and sexist when we say it’s the individual that counts.  They are semantically incoherent.
And again, I don’t understand what the hell they’re screaming about.  No, seriously.  Throughout my entire life, one side of the conversation has held Hollywood — the left.  Movies like “Reds” weren’t made by the right, the glorification of the sixties protesters wasn’t an artifact of the right, etc.  So, who the hell wants to deny who “representation?”  We’ve had plenty of action-hero females, plenty of male castrati, plenty of people of all colors — hey, one of my favorite sf movies remains Independence Day — so… why would these “reactionaries” (Really, do you get your entire vocabulary from “the Illustrated Lenin for children”?) only react NOW?
Perhaps there’s something more going on.  Look in the mirror, you assholes, look.  You feel threatened and you’re everything you accuse us of being. – SAH]

In other words, it’s fine to ignore them and to not care what they want or what they say, and to deny them the myopic whitewashed world they demand. They don’t deserve representation of their ideas, since their ideas are backward, hateful, and devoid of merit in the first place. If you scream in anger about seeing other people represented, if you harass and insult and threaten marginalized people for daring to exist and to appear in movies, then you and your beliefs have no place in modern storytelling or modern society (except as villains to be defeated and cast aside forever).

[Marginalized people… like people who disagree with your ideas?  Like the many writers, artists and creatives you’ve kept out because no matter how good they are, they’re just not “good people”?  Like people who, by opening their mouth once and saying “That’s not exactly true” render their work unacceptable to you forever?
It must be.  Because other than that, WHO IS MARGINALIZED in entertainment in the 21st century?  Who isn’t represented, in proportion and beyond proportion to the population?  Who?

As for ideas being backward and hateful and devoid of merit, you mean like the collectivist ideas that caused the death of AT LEAST a hundred million innocents throughout the world?  You flaming hypocrites, you power seekers.  The rot of a HUNDRED MILLION graves calls out against you, even as the dead hands of Stalin and Mao creep up your asses to manipulate your unthinking brains.  No wonder you’re afraid of the mirror.  We know the monster that looks back.

No one threatens “marginalized people.”  You’re the gatekeepers.  You’re the ones who marginalize, unperson and isolate.  Look at yourself, LOOK.

As for “beliefs have no place in modern story telling”…. Yeah, we’ve seen it.  Oh we’ve seen it.  You create straw opponents who are racist, sexist, homophobic and either become enlightened and repentant, or die horrible deaths, and then you dance around proclaiming victory.  You have no idea what individualists actually stand for.  You create your tower of unfalsifiable beliefs and then dance around proclaiming virtue.  I’d call you kindergartners, except kindergartners don’t have gatekeeping power and probably wouldn’t use it to support genocidal philosophies- SAH]

Yeah! De-platform those assholes! No place in modern storytelling! Wait, wut?

Who -is- this maniac? Well, he’s this guy. Mark Hughes.

Mark Hughes, screen writer and SJW weenie.

I work as a screenwriter for film and TV. In a former life I was a media specialist & campaign ad writer.

I think he left out a word. He meant to say DEMOCRAT campaign ad writer.

Thing is, I’ve seen this reaction before. Remember Fantastic Four? We were all nerd-racists for saying that was going to suck, right? Then when Marvel Comics was tanking hard in April last year? That was nerd-racism then, too. The four years of the Sad Puppies Campaign, super-duper nerd-racism. Kicking nerd-racist Conservative authors out of Guest-of-Honor spots at conventions, totally consistent with the narrative.

[PARTICULARLY the Sad Puppies campaign, of whom ONE person qualified as a white male and two as white females (though one a severely disabled one.)  All of us Dudebro racist and sexist.  Which took effort.  Like, sex and race change operations.  They’ll do ANYTHING to avoid that mirror.  ANYTHING.  One is starting to wonder if it’s their own hateful beliefs they avoid, or if they’re aware of their stunning lack of talent and that it’s only virtue signaling and liberal privilege that keeps them making money. – SAH]

Prediction: If she doesn’t get fired over the failure of Solo, Kathleen Kennedy will double down on the SJW themes for the next Star Wars. There will be gay droids and trans Jedi, disabled POC heros and the whole quilt-bag full of progressive agenda goodness. The movie will suck, the box-office will bomb harder than a B-52 squadron, and Ms. KK will be violently defended by Mark Hughes. Right before they fire her.

[Because of course, Kathleen Kennedy and her ilk are unable to conceive of people except as widgets within groups.  So these characters will not be real or resemble anyone alive or dead (as the disclaimer goes) because they’ll come from a planet where you are your minority and oppression group ONLY.  (I think we found the racist, sexist homophobic, too.) So the story will be about as much fun as reading The Communist Manifesto, but infinitely longer.  And of course, the unfalsifiable beliefs of the left, that equate political signaling with quality will insist that the only reason it can fail is that the people are bad and evil.  The same people who, for years before the left went full potato supported lavishly filmmakers with whose political opinions they disagreed (and yes, we saw the.  You leftists are about as stealthy as Godzilla in a ninja costume. But we didn’t care as long as the story and characters were good.) – SAH]

Dear Disney, save yourself the money and fire her now. Your shareholders will thank you.

[For sure.  Another characteristic of the left is that you’ll never be enlightened enough for them.  Not until “capitalism” is destroyed, and everyone is forced to watch movies that are “good for them.”  Walt Disney is spinning so fast in his grave, you could power California from the movement.  This is not what Disney’s massive fortune and power are founded on.  But hey, if you want to squander it in virtue signaling, you can lose it all.  That’s fine too.- SAH]

The Phantom NerdRacist.

[by which he means the kind of racist who doesn’t care what color people or characters are provided they’re decent people and interesting characters.

It is weird the left now insists that “color blind”is “erasing people of color” and therefore racist.  This only makes sense if to you “people of color” are ONLY the color and not individuals.  So you see only the relative level of tanning, and you consult the chart of relative victimhood.  You don’t see that people are people and individuals are individuals, and in fact racists are ones that view the whole world through the lens of race.
Boy, oh, boy, Hitler would love YOU.

Once again you are revealing the ugly biases and monstrous beliefs that you try to project onto us.

And because you follow the same path of unpersoning large sections of the population, YOU my dear leftists would bring about the same hell Hitler caused if you ever got power. Because, yeah, Hitler was a despicable racist.  So was FDR.  And?  It’s believing that some segment of people aren’t “really people” that unfolds the horrors of Hitler, or Stalin or Mao, the last two having unleashed their horrors not on races as such, but groups they defined as non-human.  Not worthy of being heard.  Standing in the way of progress. As you do.
Fortunately a lot of us will make sure you never get that power.  Unlike you, most of us have children and grandchildren and other kids we care about.  We’re not fighting for these big lumpen “groups” you’re so fond of.  We’re fighting for real people.  And we’ll make sure you don’t spread your poison to them.  Because with your philosophies, it always ends in the mass graves. – Sincerely yours, Sarah A. Hoyt, who you assure me is a (racist, sexist, homophobic, da.) Mormon White Male.]