When a memo like this has to be issued, things have gone pretty far south. Isn’t it pretty much illegal everywhere except Nevada and some foreign countries? Why not just issue a more general memo that Department employees should obey the law?
Category Archives: Social Commentary
Campus Rape
Some thoughts on the increasingly insane environment on college campuses, and witch hunts in the media.
[Update a few minutes later]
“http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/09/to-lie-about-rape-is-to-enable-evil/”:
To lie about rape is to enable evil. There is no polite way around that fact. It’s not the job of survivors to package rape into a neat media package for liberals and conservatives to eviscerate each other with.
The terror clings to you. Facing it, reporting it, enduring the medical exams and procedures, and following the judicial process is unimaginably difficult. What Rolling Stone did was provide an assist to perpetrators, robbing survivors of credibility. It’s unconscionable. It degrades our shared existence as Americans.
They don’t care.
Reflections On Sad Puppies
…clearly, the people who instigated today’s parade of falsehoods at Entertainment Weekly were not eager for reconciliation. This was straight-up character assassination. A slash-and-burn hit job. Aided and abetted by media devices which are programmed to seek and spread controversy, for the sake of clicks, likes, and money.
Is Sad Puppies 3 a terrible thing? It is if you ask the opponents of same.
Is Sad Puppies 3 hateful to women or ethnic minorities?
Only if you believe Sad Puppies 3 participants like Annie Bellet or Rajnar Vajra don’t count.
I think perhaps what some people (unused to the insider baseball of SF/F) might not be clear about, is that Sad Puppies 3 is not a thing invented to keep anyone off the Hugo ballot for demographic reasons. It was invented to (originally) poke fun at some tired predictabilities in the selection process, as well as scuttle the notion that the award was actually all about quality, when it’s more or less been a popularity and quasi-politicized contest the whole time. Along the way we fairly skewered the concept of literary affirmative action — that works and authors should be judged on the basis of author or character demographics and box-checking, not the audience’s enjoyment of the prose — so perhaps that’s where opponents of SP3 thought they found a toe-hold? And used it as best as they could to rope in a lot of outside media, in a clownish attempt to punish and discredit both Larry and myself.
Obviously, anyone who tries to make a coherent case for me being racist or sexist . . . has over 21 years of contradictory evidence to overcome. You cannot have lived my life, and be a racist or a sexist. It is an ontological impossibility. I’ve seen too much of the elephant, to borrow a phrase. Plus, my wife probably would have thrown me out on my butt a long time ago — she being the far more astute judge of character, than either a low-rent tabloid blogger or a pernicious and vindictive SF/F personality.
And from Robert Tracinski: How to fight back in the culture war:
The other thing we’ve come to expect from the Social Justice Warriors is a bitter, dismissive hatred for the fans of their own field, who stubbornly refuse to be reformed by their betters. A rant from “progressive” writer Philip Sandifer, echoing last year’s proclamation that “Gamers Are Dead,” declared “The Day Fandom Ended.”
Sandifer argued for “the moral duty of progressive voices to form a blocking majority, and to loudly admit that fandom as it stands is broken, and that any work proclaimed to be the best of the year by a fandom this broken is demeaned by the association.” So he advocates that “progressives” should buy their way into the final ballot and vote for “No Award Given” in every category. “The 2015 Hugos should simply be blank.”
In other news, he’s going to take his ball and go home.
Not to be outdone, “Jeopardy Jerk“ Arthur Chu decided to live down to his epithet by denouncing “democracy” as such. It’s like Stalin said: the problem with elections is that you never know ahead of time who’s going to win.
Inherent in leftism is the notion that we all must be guided by a small elite, a revolutionary vanguard, and that if we resist our indoctrination, it is necessary to dissolve the people and elect another.
To be sure, it is possible some of the Sad Puppies nominees won because of their right-leaning politics rather than their quality. And it also appears that the proprietor of the competing slate, Rabid Puppies, has said a few genuinely objectionable things. But the science-fiction establishment might want to take a moment to ask how they have so alienated their core audience as to provoke this kind of mass protest vote. Than again, forget I said that. “Progressives” never ask that question. Inherent in leftism is the notion that we all must be guided by a small elite, a revolutionary vanguard, and that if we resist our indoctrination, it is necessary to dissolve the people and elect another.
I’d like to be a conscientious objector, but they won’t let me.
[Late-morning update]
It’s almost like they were all reading off the same script.
[Thursday-morning update]
The Social Justice Warriors aren’t so tough when even “sad puppies” can beat them.
[Bumped]
The Secret Republicans
As with any culture dominated by Leftists, it’s a chilling atmosphere.
Peter Thiel
A conversation with Tyler Cowen, on the future of innovation, life extension and God.
Take A Bow, Media!
You’re crushing it:
Yes, it was definitely the rightwing outlets calling for justice for Trayvon. National Review was first on the ground in Missouri, chanting “hands up, don’t shoot” with the protesters. Doesn’t she realize that by pointing to these examples, she’s disproving her point? That they were almost exactly like Jackie’s case: prettied up falsehoods designed to make the case for larger structural reforms? “Oh, sure, Trayvon had some run-ins with the law and clearly attacked Zimmerman, but this is about larger problems.” “Oh, sure, Mike Brown had literally just committed a strong arm robbery and was attacking a cop rather than surrendering to him, but this is about larger problems.” “Oh, sure, Jackie is a liar and a fraud, but this is about larger problems.” The right didn’t invent these people. The right didn’t bring them to light. I bet she also thinks it was also the right that tried to turn Deamonte Driver into a cause célèbre.
It’s almost like the narrative must take precedent over the truth, or something.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Yup, “Left sticks to narratives, evidence be damned.”
[Update a while later]
Rolling Stone can’t even apologize right.
Time to start accusing the media of “rollingstoning” every time they pull something like this.
The Food Babe
Yes, she is a loon.
Though I don’t think this author is quite up to date on the science herself:
Coffee, before Starbucks turns it into a milkshake, is pretty healthy for you.
After, too. There’s nothing wrong with milk or fat in coffee.
The Left’s New Rules
They may come to regret them:
The revolt has begun, peacefully. In 2010, and again in 2014, the Silent Majority returned and sent an unmistakable message to the liberal elite. When Bill Clinton got that message in 1994, he recognized that opposition and worked with it. But under Obama, the liberal elite acts to ignore and delegitimize the opposition. 2014 was not a tantrum; it was a warning, and the liberals are betting that they can bluff and bluster their way through it.
When you block all normal means of dissent, whether by ignoring the political will of you opponents or using the media to mock and abuse them, you build up the pressure. In 30+ years as an active conservative, I’ve never heard people so angry, so frustrated, so fed up. These emotions are supposed to be dissipated by normal political processes. But liberals are bottling them up. And they will blow. It’s only a matter of how.
Liberals need to understand the reality that rarely penetrates their bubble. Non-liberal Americans (it’s more than just conservatives who are under the liberal establishment’s heel) are the majority of this country. They hold power in many states and regions in unprecedented majorities. And these attacks focus on what they hold dearest – their religion, their families and their freedom.
What is the end game, liberals? Do you expect these people you despise to just take it? Do you think they’ll just shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, I guess we better comply?” Do you even know any real Americans? Do you think you’ll somehow be able to force them into obedience – for what is government power but force – after someone finally says “Enough?”
I think they do think that. At its heart, this is why they want to disarm us, and why we will continue to resist.
The Hugos
…were a huge loss for Tor and the SJW fascists, and a win for those interested in true “diversity.”
[Sunday morning update]
…to be asked for civility from the side that’s been emptying the slops bucket on our head ever since their favorites didn’t get the call is all too precious and rich. The people who were screaming at us that “Women are allowed to write science fiction too” apparently didn’t notice the women on this side and on the ballot (I know, we’re wrongwomen and wrongfans.) And the idiots who for years have said that this was all because Larry wanted a Hugo owe him a giant apology. Until I see that I’m all out of f*cks to give about their precious hurt feelings.
…I’ve never accused anyone of “stealing” the Hugos or of buying sock puppet memberships; other than saying that some of the nominees (and winners) in recent years have been long on social justice and short on worth (a value judgement but MY value judgement and that of a lot of fans who no longer use the Hugo as a buy recommendation), I’ve never impugned the character of any Hugo nominee/winner for being nominees/winners (I’ve pointed out bad behavior from some of them and an habit of wearing their own colon as a stylish hat in other circumstances. That’s different, but that’s frankly more descriptive than impugning);and I’ve never, not even in my worst moments accused anyone on the other side of thought crime (racist, sexist, homophobic, wrongthinker or eeeevil) or private vice (I’ve never once said I fear for my safety around them.)
I will employ civility when I see some. And some apologies, too for people like Larry.
I hope she doesn’t hold her breath.
Also, on this Easter, if you’re the praying type (or even if not) send her some best wishes for improving health.
Anti-Discrimination Laws
The libertarian position.
I’m amused/appalled at the people who cannot make a distinction of what is immoral/wrong and what should be illegal. Particularly when it comes from the same people who whine about how they oppose “legislating morality.” They’re not opposed to it at all, they just want to legislate their morality.