Hugos, Puppies and Left Wing Whiners

For the second straight year a Hugo Controversy has erupted. This is the fourth iteration of the Sad Puppies movement, the second year of the Rabid Puppies and yet another year of many when SJWs and other assorted vermin thought that they had the right to lock anyone out of their awards if they didn't have the right, by which I mean Left, politics. Here's the funny things: As nerds and geeks we don't give a rat's ass what you think about us as people. I've been called names since before I knew there was a Right and a Left. I'm used to people like you and the bullshit they spout. Bring it.

Look guys, we tried being nice. Yes, for Sad Puppies One, Larry Correia got himself nominated because he knew you would all freak out. You did. Then came Sad Puppies 2. Correia decided he would nominated one work in each category based on entertainment value instead of Social Relevance and you got a little more pissed. How dare this misbegotten son of a conservative and his flea-bitten followers violate your safe space. And then, Sad Puppies 3 appeared over the horizon.

Sad Puppies 3 had a new leader. Brad Torgersen appeared over the horizon and he wasn't screwing around. This time he accepted suggestions from others for his list and came up with a bunch of nominees in most categories. He had the temerity to suggest that people read what was on the list and make their own decisions. You Leftist types were outraged. I get it. Free thought is anathema to those of you who wish to control decisions. How can the rest of us be forced to think as you do if you can't control the information we absorb? I get it. It was an approach that worked for Stalin, Mao and Hitler and now the Left in the United States wants to use the same approach. This is just one battlefront.

I've written here about the types of tactics the left is using in the United States and who pioneered them. TL:DR Berntards and Black Lives Matter types are using the same techniques Mussolini and especially Hitler did by committing violence to their enemies and attempting to rewrite history. And no, the SJW types in this country haven't quite burned the books that they hate, electing so far to either rewrite or ban them. I'd give even money as to what tomorrow holds. Make no mistake, the SJW types that want to ban alternate political views from their awards are using the same techniques.

Here's the thing folks: It is not possible to compromise with totalitarians. The only workable options are to rebel or submit. I choose to rebel. It's time to burn it all down. If you believe you're too good to share your awards then maybe you don't deserve to have them. What is happening here is not just a fight over awards, it's a fight over the only type of diversity that matters: The diversity of ideas. 

The Puppy Kickers would have you believe that we are the Nazis. Not so. Irene Gallo was one hundred and eighty degrees away from the truth. Let me tell you a story to illustrate my point:

Once upon a time there was a man. He believed in a cause. He railed against social injustices carried out by a race of people that controlled the money, the power, the press and even international banking. He blamed them for all of society's problems. He believed that the lives of people like him mattered and the lives of those he hated did not. He banned all ideas except his own and banned "degenerate" works. In other words, he removed the right of anyone to disagreed with him.  His name was Adolph Hitler. Although he is best known for hating and killing Jews, they only make up six million of the twelve million people he murdered.

As a matter of fact, when the concentration camps first opened, they weren't meant for Jews or Gypsies. The first people put into the camps were political prisoners: Those who committed the crime of disagreeing. That's why the gates of Auschwitz read "Arbeit Macht Frei." That translates roughly as "Work will make you free". The Jews weren't going to be released and everyone knew it. The point of the sign is that the political prisoners could eventually make it out... if they did as they were told and didn't step out of line. That's pretty much what the Puppy Kickers want from us.

Look, I'm not saying that the gas chambers are about to open for conservatives or that it's the Puppy Kickers who would do the gassing if they did. What I'm saying is that creating a precedent of banning people from things because they disagree with you is a dangerous step to take but it's one that WorldCon seems incredibly comfortable with. Refusing to vote for someone who deserves an award because of a possible political association between them and the people who nominated them is a symptom. If the Kickers want totalitarianism and unity of thought they're welcome to seek it, just not in my country or my genre.

The next question then becomes what to do with Vox Day because, let's face it, he's no different than the people that he hates. The SJW types and Vox want a war with each other with us caught in the middle. I say a pox on both of their houses. We're SF fans right? How many of you have read The Ashes series by William W Johnstone? In one of the books, and I can't remember which one in particular, Rebel leader Ben Raines is faced with fighting a group of white supremacists one on hand and a group of white hating blacks on the other, so he does the intelligent thing: He incites a fight between the two groups. He lets them kill each other. When they're too hotly engaged to effectively disengage from each other he cuts loose with the heavy artillery and kills both sides. I'm not advocating actual physical violence here, but if the two sides want to metaphorically beat each other to death it's only smart to let them. The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy and nothing more, yet there is an opportunity here. Let them burn each other out. Once we've cleared the field of both sides we can help pick up the pieces and support stories that entertain rather than "inform."

Listen people, I have a degree in history. I understand the importance of academic presses and their mission of increasing the knowledge of humanity. The fact remains that houses like Baen, Tor and even Castalia do not exist in that capacity. They exist to entertain a mass audience, not to support one side or another politically. The big publishers in the genre keep complaining about how their market is shrinking even while Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Deadpool break box office records. Pull your head out of your ass people: Make the genre fun again. Make the award fun again. That's how you'll attract more attention and more readers. That's how you'll expand the genre. That's how you'll make more money for the dirty capitalist business owners that sign your royalty checks and provide you with the means to feed your family or at least live more comfortably. It's time to get over yourselves people.


Some Hugo related items can be purchased below:

Let's see how this turns out...

As some of you are probably already aware, today is the deadline to vote in the 2015 Hugo Awards. I've come out publicly on the side of the Sad Puppies, and I do hope they win, but this is not a "Vote for the Puppies" post per se. What I'm posting about is "If you paid for the right to vote... VOTE!!!!" post. Don't vote for my favorite nominee(or at least don't vote for my favorite because it's MY favorite nominee) vote for your favorite nominee. Vote on quality of story. Vote because you love the author. Vote because of political conent if you must but vote dammit! And vote for a nominee.

I am of the opinion that the noted rash of late registering voters this year were probably mostly Sad Puppies followers. I could be wrong. I have no access to insider information. I will say that this appears to be unusual given the amount of comment it raised. If it wasn't typical Hugo voters registering it had to have been our side. It just makes sense. Again, I could be wrong and I have already sent out for a double order of crow on order. I'll be eating it if I'm wrong.

I will say this: Noah Ward is the biggest asshole this side of Cliff Hanger. If you CHORF types can't get over yourselves enough to admit someone who doesn't share your beliefs into your little club, you suck. I mean that. Voting No Award isn't a way to "stick it to the man" it's a way to mark yourselves as bullies. What you're doing if you vote No Award is showing the world that you're too cowardly to expose yourself to ideas that you don't agree with. At that point why not just burn them? It worked for Hitler. So yes, let's all burn the works of the evil, privileged White Male writers because John Scalzi said to. Also, let's not look too closely at John Scalzi. Or the Neilsen-Haydens or...  Nevermind. Oh, but I forgot the side that WANTS people to read all points of view and make their own decisions is made up of Nazis. Sorry, I forget that the side that believes in freedom is the one for totalitarian government.

I want to take the time out to congratulate the Puppies (both Sad and Rabid) for a second. I don't care if you win, lose or tie here. The bottom line is that you have managed to get a conversation started. For too long we've taken crap from the K. Tempest Bradfords of the world because we were scared to fight back. Don't get me wrong. If K Tempest Teapot wants to only read non-white male straight authors then she has that right. The bottom line is that she tried to take away the livelihood of writers based on race and we fought back.

I'm not saying that minorities, women, LBGTQI, WTFever people should be banned or even discouraged from writing/reading, etc. No one on our side is. What I'm saying is that I shouldn't have to vote for someone based on that crap. I'm saying that equality means equal treatment and if you want to win an award for a story you should have to WRITE A GOOD STORY. That's all I'm saying.

So go forth and vote today my brave Hugo-nauts. Vote you conscience. Vote for the best story because YOU think it's the best story. Don't worry about whether or not your choice is politically correct. Don't worry about whether it supports the right causes. Just worry about whether or not you enjoyed the story and found it entertaining. Let the CHORFs be CHORFs and do what feels right for you.

Some works by Sad Puppies leadership (past, present and future) can be found at the links below:

The Truth About the Anti-Puppies and Leftists in General

I've lived and learned for close to four decades now. I've talked politics with Liberals and Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats and people from parliamentary democracies who think Americans are all nutjobs and wonder why we don't have a real range of choices in our candidates. (For the record, I'd love a chance to chuck the two party system, but it's going to take an environment we just don't have). I've read books in the SF/F genre sure, but also in history in which I hold a degree. (Oakland University, 2010) Something I've noticed in far too many instances is that the Irene Gallos of the world are just too common. It took a psychologist to figure out why.

Jonathan Haidt did the research far better than I could have. He has a Ph.D. in Psychology and I don't. Put bluntly, that makes him much more qualified to offer explanations for human behavior than I am. He also has scientific evidence that is actually falsifiable by anyone who wishes to test them. It's all explained in his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. He has actually proven two things:

1.) Liberals in the US are not capable of articulating the arguments of their conservative countrymen.

and

2.) Conservatives in the US are capable of articulating the arguments of their liberal countrymen.

The reasons he presents are wrapped in psych-babble (he _is_ a psychologist after all) but have to do with a couple of important things: One, he argues that ideology is based on emotion. This rings true to me. Human beings are not rational actors. Every human being thinks that they act in a rational manner. We're all capable of coming up with perfectly logical rationalizations afterward. If you don't believe me, study sales technique. You don't sell something to someone by offering them rational reasons as to why it will be good for them. You sell them something by making them want it. Wanting something is an emotional response. Wanting leads to buying, leads to the salesman getting the money he wants to buy the thing that he wants. Bottom line, every time. If you want it, you'll buy it. This is the reason why so many people smoke, drink, weigh too much, have promiscuous sex, etc. People know that all of his is bad for them but they do it anyway because it's what they want  to do. (Yes I am aware of the effects of addiction. Any addict in existence had experience with their drug before  they were addicted to it though. It's that usage which led to their addiction.) There is a lot of sense here.

The other has to do with how liberals evaluate things versus how conservatives evaluate things. This has to do with a set of sliding moral scales: Conservatives have five, liberals have two. Conservatives are therefore able to understand liberals because conservatives use both of the liberal criteria plus some. Liberals, so says the book, are unable to understand conservative belief because they only understand things based on their two criteria and are leaving out much of the context that a conservative uses. (Read the book if you want the details. It's his thesis and it's too long to go over in detail here.) This is very elegant but, I think, wrong.

I'm not drawing on scientific study or the understanding of the human mind possessed by Mr Haidt. I am drawing solely on my experience as a human being and a student of history. It should be mentioned though that my experience includes living in a blue state. If further includes taking graduate level history courses at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan; a school known for having an annual Labor History conference and a Labor History archive both on campus. My undergraduate mentor was also a labor historian. (And if you speak badly of Dan Clark in my presence we're fighting. Physically.) I've taken seminars with these people, I've seen how they think and I know what they're like. There is no other way to state things: Leftists do not understand rightist thinking because they refuse to listen to it. They keep themselves deliberately ignorant.

Maybe this is not something you can understand until you've experienced it. Seriously, when you sit in a classroom full of people who look at you like you grew a second head when you spit out a fact (and yes, my point of view is biased as well) because they've never heard one. Seriously. Listen to a room full of leftists talk and they'll mention the evils of Capitalism (never what they are, just that they exist) the evils of gun ownership (while ignoring real life statistics on the effects of gun possession on crime in general and violent crime -including rape- in particular. Oddly enough, the fact that gun control laws in the US started in the Jim Crow era for the specific purpose of preventing black men from firing back when people showed up to lynch them gets left out too.) the horrors of rape culture (in the West, where rapists are punished, but not in places like the Middle East where women are executed for the crime of being raped) etc., etc.

The bottom line is that anyone who opposes the liberal narrative is seen as going beyond the pale. It's a weird sort of dynamic when viewed from the inside from an outsiders perspective. I think an example might just be in order. (And yes, I understand that anecdote does NOT equal data, but work with me here.)

One night while in one of my seminar classes (a class in modern US history) the subject of Europe and its quickly increasing Muslim population came up. The professor asked a question.

"What are all of these white people afraid of?"  (For the record, the prof was as white as the new-fallen snow.)

I perked up. "That's a long story. Literally. If you're really interested check out a novel by Tom Kratman called Caliphate. He makes his case through fiction, but you're not going to find a nonfiction history of something that hasn't happened yet. Actually, a lot of you would probably find it offensive. Kratman doesn't exactly go out of his way to make the Muslims look like the good guys."

A guy named Sam looked up. He was very visibly confused. "Why would you read something that's offensive?"

I looked back at him. "I didn't say I thought it was offensive. I said you would. Honestly though, if you want to know what someone who disagrees with you thinks, you have to be willing to listen to what they're saying."

The shock in that classroom was palpable. It went dead silent. I've never been stared at by so many people with their jaws so low to the ground in my life. The prof ended up calling for a break.

All of this brings me back to the Sad Puppy controversy in a roundabout way. Some people are shocked by the comments of one Irena Gallo. I'm not. It's about what I expected. This is what happens when Leftists won't listen. Yes, I get the fact that the argument that the Pups nominated women and minorities. Yes, I get the fact that it is demonstrably true. What all of you people who are shocked are missing is that the arguments don't matter. The other side has no interest in reading them or evaluating them. The Sad Puppies are offensive in their eyes. We didn't follow the narrative. We must be repudiated. I get why the Pups were pissed. I don't blame them. The fact remains that this was predictable.

The principle of not feeding the trolls is an old one in internet terms and it's one worth remembering. You're not going to win the argument with them because they're not listening. When they reject the information you're giving them without evaluating it you're wasting your time. Concentrate on the elebenty bajillion people out there who are not truly the enemy. There are millions of people in this country who read/watch/play SF/F. They're the people you need to recruit. They're the ones who can help us beat Noah Ward in the Hugo Voting. The hardcore Anti-Puppies are haters and haters gonna hate.  And remind me sometime and I'll tell you all about how no rightist could ever truly be a neo-Nazi because the Nazi party (actually the  Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei  or National Socialist German Worker's Party) was a Leftist party. Yeah, it has nothing to do with us nor do we have anything to do with it. Don't ask them to believe that either.

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
Jonathan Haidt
Pantheon, 2012


The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion can be purchased here:

True Fandom

(First off, a bit of housekeeping. This blog was formerly Sunday/Wednesday/Friday. As of now I am switching it to Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday. It just works better for me that way.)

I would like to come before all of you and make an admission: I am not a real Science Fiction fan. Yes, I hear all of you out there. I run a blog that reviews SF/F books and movies. I am aware that I once owned (freaking divorce) six bookcases full of SF/F literature. I know I've read comics on and off since the early eighties. I've seen the original Star Wars movies approximately four hundred and forty seven million times. I have been spotted at a couple of cons. My nearest and dearest all know that I write in the genre even if I haven't been published. I'm working on it. But apparently I don't count because I don't pay for a membership to a con I can't attend because it's not local to me. For that, I'm not a real fan. Just ask Teresa Neilsen-Hayden, member of the Secret Masters of Fandom. According to her only people who have supported Worldcon for years have a right to have their opinions heard. Even the Sad Puppies are not REAL members of the con and do not deserve to have their opinions heard because they don't support her point of view. Teresa Neilsen-Hayden can shove her opinion up her ass.

I just admitted that I did not support the Sad Puppy slate in the Hugo Awards this year for financial reasons. That much being said, I support their right, or indeed the right of ANY person who wishes to nominate and/or vote in the Hugo Award and PAY THEIR FREAKING MONEY TO DO SO to vote. It's that simple. TNH is, along with her followers, currently campaigning to have the rules of the convention changed to keep people she disagrees with from voting. She, and others like her, quite frankly disgust me.

Give it up folks. I get the fact that your whiny leftist asses are bothered by the fact that people who won't preach your beliefs tells me everything I need to know about your character. I personally have praised the works of Suzanne Collins on this blog even though I disagree with her politics because she's earned it. That woman can tell a DAMN GOOD story. Yes, it supports a leftist worldview. It also involves plenty of action, a believable love story and characters I'd love a chance to hang out with. That's all that matters.

So, you SJW snobs that can't deal with the fact that people are voting for who they want to vote for, or that the organizers of the Sad Puppy movement have promoted sales of the works they have put on their slate (as an effort to get people to read what they want them to vote for and to make some filthy lucre) or that they might dare to write something you disagree with can kiss my ass. They've paid their money, now they'll take their chances. This year's organizer was Brad Torgersen. I already reviewed him here and gave him the highest score I've ever given. Next years organizer will be Kate Paulk. I'll be reviewing one of her books shortly. (Spoiler: I'm a fan. I paid for her books. I will buy the next one if she doesn't send me a copy for review.) Teresa Neilsen-Hayden has one book published. If she wants to send me a copy I'll review it. HONESTLY. If it's good, I'll tell you it's good. If it's not, I'll score it appropriately. I doubt I'll see a copy, but if I'm being honest that's because I doubt she'll hear about this blog post.

So go forth, Sad Puppies (or Wet & Irritated Kittens) and vote for who you like. Vote for the slate. Vote for something that's not on the slate. Vote for your opposition. Do what you do because you want to do it. If you've got your middle finger sticking up while you do it, I won't complain. Then again, I'll be doing the same. Oh, and just because I can:



(That's from Michael Z. Williamson. Apparently the SJW types are up in arms because they heard he got nominated. The only solution to the problem is to support the work whether you can vote or not. Plus, I've met Mad Mike and I like him. He writes like a champ too.)

Tomorrow: Salvation by Lizzie Ashworth if I get done reading it by then. If not, I'll review a movie.