Private Mars Rocket II

When I was in grade school I used to believe that professional wrestling was real. All the feuds, good and bad people, the guy from Russia, all of that was real. I think my belief in professional wrestling outlasted my belief in Santa Claus by a year or two, probably because I never saw a professional wrestler in real life. But eventually I outgrew this belief.

Comes today an interesting twitter thread about how Trump's post-election gyrations are lifted out of professional wrestling. (At the thread, one is reminded that Trump was actively involved in the "sport" for years.)

Here's a key Tweet from the thread. Professional wrestling is an industry of grift. It's about open and closed systems of power and knowledge. It is divided between "smarts," people who understand the grift and "marks," people who are being manipulated. Also from the thread, I learn that a "work" is the term for the organized scam, while a "shoot" is something that is real.

I see that Maximal Leader of the Sad Puppies Larry Correia is arguing that the statistics prove fraud while Wily Coyote, International SuperGenius At Large has three posts up today on the same point (although to be fair one of them is just a retread of Correia's rantings). I'm sure there are more, but I just can't be arsed to go look for them.

So here's my question - are the leaders of the Sad Puppies Smarts or Marks? I report, you decide.

Two additional thoughts on the Election That Still Is:

Thought #1

I read right-wing blogs so you don't have to. One of my favorites (for certain values of favorite) is that of Wily E. Coyote, International Genius At Large (just ask him). He was, pre-election, calling for a "Trumpslide." 400 Electoral votes, swing California red, etc., etc. After the election, with not a peep about what he said the Friday before, he's now telling his supporters to be calm because Trump will arrest all the Democrats and stop the fraud, thus squeezing out a 274-ish win.

This movie is a remake of The Affair of the Sad Puppies. (A real-life attempt to cook the books for a science fiction literary award.) The plotters in that case were confident that all their shenanigans were legit, they had an absolute majority, and besides everybody had to go along with their Master Plans. Spoiler: They was wrong.

Thought #2

As discussed yesterday, there's a "Trump effect" that caused the pre-election polling to be wrong. One oft-sited possible cause is the "shy" Trump voter. This left-wing blogger thinks the real answer is paranoia. There may be something to it. After all, if you need an AR-15 to go to the Piggly-Wiggly lest the Al-Quida / BLM / Ninja hit squad shows up, how likely are you to talk to J. Random Pollster?

I had a minor role in the Affair of the Sad Puppies, and I see many parallels between that affair and the current brouhaha over Brett Kavanaugh.

In the Sad Puppies, we had a group of individuals who claimed that because unspecified conspiracies had occurred, they were allowed to have a very public conspiracy. We (the non-Puppies) were also told that we had to follow the rules, including a that was made up specifically by the Puppies for us. This was the "rule" that we couldn't vote No Award in a category.

When, as I and many others did, it was pointed out that the Puppies were violating the social norms of the organization, we were told to suck it up and called names. There was a huge amount of high-handedness coming from the Puppies such that some people who were ideologically aligned with the group walked away.

In the end, people (like me) came out from the woodwork to fight and block the Puppies. This yielded more crying from the Puppies, this time arguing that we were unfairly attacking them.

As I said at the top of this post, I see the same pattern with Trump in general and the Kavanaugh nomination in particular. In this case, the special "rule" being used by the Republicans is that idea that once a hearing is held on a subject, no more hearings can be held even if new information surfaces. To state such a rule is to highlight the absurdity of it.

In any event, the Republicans had better hope that the Supreme Court does not overturn Roe V. Wade. Although much short-term damage will be done, in the long term they will get rolled by a large majority. Simply put and as they discovered with Obamacare, taking a right away from the American people is the best way to get millions of them to come out of the woodwork in opposition.

Scott Adams, the gift that keeps on giving, dashed off a blog post on his lunch hour in which he solves the North Korea problem. Like much emanating from the Alt-Right at the moment, his idea is at best half-baked. Scott, like many of the alt-right, is completely unable to understand what the various groups want. So, he makes an assumption about what they want, then follows that assumption down a logical path. But because he hasn't walked in the other guy's shoes, his understanding of their goal is so far out that his proposal makes no sense.

In this particular case, Scott assumes that China wants a peaceful Korean peninsula. Well, they'd like and would take a peaceful region, but what they absolutely don't want is for North Korea to collapse. That would spark a massive refugee problem and other political and economic heartburn. China also doesn't want a well-armed and Western-sponsored nation on it's border. China likes buffer zones. As a bonus, North Korean antics distract the US, giving China a freer hand in the region. This means China can't and won't push too hard on North Korea.

Scott assumes the North Korean leadership is interested in personal financial gain, so his plan gives them time to move their money overseas to hide it. Maybe, but it's entirely possible that the Kim family are psychopaths who just want people to be scared of them. It's also possible that they think Communism is "right" and the current poverty is character-building. Lastly, something is keeping the army from just taking over. Perhaps if one removes the "threat" of invasion from the South, the army will see that as a green light to take over.

At any rate, the failure of the Alt-Right and Trump to understand this is part of a whole. Somebody once said that for every problem there was a solution that was simple, obvious and wrong. The Alt-Right has a platform full of such solutions.

I was flying back from a business trip to Orlando today, so I didn't see much news. I did note that the GOP, in a squeaker of a vote, repealed Obamacare. I'll just note the hypocrisy of "read the bill" (which they didn't) and "jam through without debate" (ditto) and the complete lack of bipartisan support for this bill (which supposedly made Obamacare bad). I will note that I think the Republicans have shot themselves in the foot, much like the Sad Puppies did with the Hugo affair.

So, in the Sad Puppies affair, a bunch of maximalists jammed through a slate of nominees. Many people (including Yours Truly) came out of the woodwork to put the kibosh on this. Trump and the GOP have jammed through something that will prove to be unpopular and unworkable. People have been coming out of the woodwork against Trump since the day he won the election, and this will continue.

In general, when maximalists gain control of a situation, anti-maximalists come out of the woodwork to oppose them. In the Civil War, when Southerners, upset that the North wouldn't allow them to expand slavery (see South Carolina's declaration of secession), left the Union and tried to take the Navy and coastal forts on the way out, people came out of the woodwork in opposition.

Being a maximalist generates maximal resistance.

I purchased and read Forbidden Thoughts, the much-hyped book from Sad Puppies Central Command. For the most part, I found it neither forbidden nor thoughtful. Rather, it was heavy-handed to the point of immobility, (mostly) poorly-written and consistently poorly edited. A couple of stories saved this book from the shame of a one-star review, but only barely.

There were several non-fiction articles in the book, all but the introduction being recycled blog postings from the Big Three of Sad Puppydom, Tom Kratman, Larry Correia and Brad R. Torgersen. The postings were heavy-handed diatribes when written, and age has done them no favors. Yiannopoulos phoned in a semi-original introduction, but his idea that Science Fiction is under attack by the Evil Left is unoriginal and remains unsupported by such trifles as fact.

On the fiction side, most of the short stories take a favorite right-wing strawman, dial it to 15, then use it to beat the reader vigorously about the head and shoulders. Chief offender was “At the Edge of Detachment” by A. M. Freeman. There, a parent can have their child killed up to the age of 13 – an “allegory” of abortion. Other stories were similarly ham-fisted, and most were unreadable.

Having said that, there were a couple of readable short stories. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, so be it. Notable shorts:

World Ablaze by Jane Lebak – for some reason, Catholics are being persecuted and arrested by the State. If you can swallow that, the story works fairly nicely.

Amazon Gambit by Vox Day – here, the author sets up an all-female military unit that, For Reasons, must fight a primitive enemy hand-to-hand. They win, although it takes a male officer to show the Poor Girls what is needed.

Test of the Prophet by L. Jagi Lamplighter – This story, if given a decent editor, would be commercially viable in any market. A woman born and raised in Pakistan, who moved to America and became a US Marine, needs to go back to Pakistan because her beloved cousin has gotten himself mixed up in the Taliban. We learn (almost too late – a good editor would have frontloaded this) that the woman can see ghosts. We learn (in an entertaining but 10% too long and talky) section that one of the things said ghosts have been up to is inserting errors into every religion’s doctrine. Again, not bad at all.

So, no, I really don’t recommend Forbidden Thoughts, especially if one wants, you know, actually forbidden thoughts.

Links of interest to me:

1) The nearly-abandoned town of Cairo Illinois. It's gone from 15,000 people to 2,000, and is fading fast. Soon, we'll have another ghost town in Illinois.

2) A very nice article by Raechel Acks on What's being done to fix the Hugo awards.

3) A fascinating story - A Hit Man Came to Kill Susan Kuhnhausen. She Survived. He Didn’t.

The various factions of Puppies told us that Worldcon and the Hugo awards were "elitist" and "not what real fans read." We were assured that all sorts of stuff that "small f fans liked" weren't on the ballot. (Note, those are not scare quotes but actual, somebody-said-that quotes.) If only DragonCon or San Diego ComicCon would do an award, well, we'd see the real truth.

So, DragonCon just started an award. Anybody could vote, so I did. After a nomination period in which everybody could nominate one work per category, now we've got a final ballot. Here's part of the list:

Best Science Fiction Novel
The Life Engineered by J-F Dubeau
Agent of the Imperium by Marc Miller
Raising Caine by Charles E. Gannon
Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwitheriing Realm by John C. Wright
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

Two of the works (Gannon and Leckie) were on the Nebula final list. Leckie's on the Hugo list, and Kim Stanley Robinson's no stranger to either list. The list is not without Puppie-dom, however. The first two works listed are self-published, and Somewhither is Castilia House.

Skimming down the rest of the list, the fiction categories seem to be reasonably well-salted with the same sort of stuff that we see in Hugo and Nebula voting. Now, since we can only vote for one per category, we'll see what gets the final nod. So far, color me unimpressed.

I have a bit of time on my hands, so you get a two-fer today. John C. Wright, a man who will never use two words when ten could be used, is upset at George Will. Will thinks Trump becoming the Republican nomination is less-than-good for the Republican Party. Wright says of Will "fall you must, for you have broken faith with us" and much more along similar lines. (If one word is good, two are better and ten are great.) A few "highlights" from the post and the comments suggest the problem.

Delusions

Wright says Muslim rape-gangs roam the streets of Europe because of Obama, and Clinton wants that to continue. Gee, I missed seeing those gangs in London when I was there and WTF is an American President supposed to do with local law enforcement in Europe?

Lack of Understanding of Process

"Look at all the insane things the left has been able to accomplish! The last 5 years have seen them imposing socialized health care, forcing everyone to pretend that homosexuals can be married..." - as of mid-2015, 55% of Americans approved of gay marriage. Majorities tend to get what they want.


A willingness to destroy the village to save it

"And in return, we got ... nothing. The spineless Congress funded all Obama's utopias." - The alternative being to shut down the Federal government?


Any corollary between this and the Sad / Rabid Puppy view of the Hugos is strictly coincidental...

On Social Pressure

One of the arguments against changing the nomination process for the Hugos is that "social pressure will change behavior." Maybe, but America's high schools and colleges are full of people who got tattoos, piercings or weird haircuts solely to piss off a social group (their parents). In short, if the desired response is to get society or a group thereof angry at one, social pressure will have exactly the opposite effect.

Why Is VD Focusing on Science Fiction

Eric Flint, for one, wondered why VD was focusing his self-proclaimed immense talents on the banality of a science fiction award. I've never met the man (fortunately) but I suspect there are two reasons. First, VD likes science fiction. If he was a dog fancier, he'd go to dog shows. Second, VD is a petty tyrant. Like all such petty tyrants, he (consciously or not) has found a niche small enough to allow him to safely exercise his tyranny.

Hugo Voting

People are not automatons, and I've already seen people refer to some of the more popular Puppy nominations as human shields. Voting strategies like this are being floated. (If you think it might have got on the ballot without a Puppy boost, vote it on merit.)

The Hugo award

Scalzi is wise on the subject of the Hugo award. Basically, the Hugos are fine. The problem is that a group of people have decided to exploit a flaw in the nominating process (and look like asses while doing so) because, well, they're asses.