John C. Wright's Blog, page 86

The Unreality Principle in Action

A reader who goes by the fruitful name of Watermelonyo takes me to task for daring to say that the modern Left supports the Jihad. He expresses astonishment, and doubts my sincerity and even my sanity for saying such a thing.

Time does not permit me to post a complete list of the outrageous statements and actions by the Left who have defended the Jihadist enemy. I assume we all remember the human shields who volunteered, with their bodies and their lives, to defend Saddam against the West.

However, time does allow me to post a partial list, compiled by another man, of supporters and support for various aspects of Jihadist terror. I have not clicked through all the links, for there are too many. I have not reproduced his whole list, for it is too long.

The list below is from one Mark Humphrys, an Irish Atheist who ‘self-identifies’ as a Liberal-Right, because the Left support for Islamic Fascism drives him away from the Left.

I reprint his list in part, and his comments, without his permission, in the hope that he would approve that his work in lighting his torch will shine a light on this dark issue.

My point in posting this list is not to convince my honorable opposition that the Left does indeed support Jihad. My point is that it is not insane, nor even unreasonable, for an honest man to see what Leftwing figures have said and done and come to the conclusion that a collusion of sentiment exists.

I am proposing that I am that one figure whom Leftists steadfastly say does not and cannot exist: a reasonable man whose conclusions do not match Leftwing conclusions.

The part of the list I find saddest is the one placed at the top. These were Mr Humpheys’ heroes, the thinkers he trusted and admired,who betrayed their trust in him. If you click through no other links, click that one. It makes for interesting reading.

The words below are Mr Humphrys’.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

The Fenwick-Sugden Plan

President Obama today made a speech in which he mocked those of us who are not illiterate of economics for not having any alternatives to Obamacare.

Well, it took me about one second of searching around for a conservative alternative to his pseudo-socialist compulsory medical insurance Ponzi Scheme that is so broken and so sad even before it starts that he has to break the law to prop it up.

I will let the virtual president explain the plan:

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

The Three Rules of Modern Politics

Mark Steyn provides the following links and a few dry words:

News from Santa’s Grotto:

Global warming hysterics at the BBC warned us in 2007 that by summer 2013, the Arctic would be ice-free. As with so many other doomsday predictions by warmists, the results turn out to be quite the opposite.

Meanwhile, down the other end at Santa’s summer vacation condo:

Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world.

Antarctic ice is now at a 35-year high. But scientists are “baffled” by the planet’s stubborn refusal to submit to their climate models. Maybe the problem with Nobel fantasist Michael Mann’s increasingly discredited hockey stick is that he’s holding it upside down.

Nonetheless, the famously settled science seems to be re-settling:

Scientists Increasingly Moving To Global Cooling Consensus

Global warming will kill us. Global cooling will kill us. And if it’s 54 and partly cloudy, you should probably flee for your life right now. Maybe scientists might usefully consider moving to being less hung up on “consensus” – a most unscientific and, in this context, profoundly corrupting concept.

Read ‘em and laugh. And recall Wright’s Three Rules of modern politics: (1) The Left never apologizes (2) The Left never wakes up (3) The Left never blushes.

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

All About The Magic, Or the Gosling of the Golden Creek Vs. The Unicorn Pooper-Scoopers

The beautiful and talented wife appears today at the fantasy writing website: Magical Words

This article is on the magic of wonder (that child-like quality that makes some of us love Doctor Who.)

Excerpt:

Beside the road leading to my street, there is a small pond. This pond is the favorite nesting place of a flock of Canadian geese who like to walk out in the street. The other day, I found myself sitting and waiting for the geese to depart, so I could drive home without running over them. As I watched the birds waddle by, I thought of people I knew who had expressed hatred for these creatures that stop traffic and leave goose droppings all over the sidewalk and golf courses. Their hatred added to my impatience.

After all, I wanted to get home. I had things to do, man! But then I remembered something. As a child, I had loved these birds. Why? Because at the gateway to the local county park was a river. Canadian geese used to nest on the river bank. If one was lucky, if one came at just the right time, one might catch a glimpse the tiny goslings paddling behind their august parents. These adorable creatures were the only baby wild animals visible to us as children. Seeing these little beige and yellow bundles of fluff lit our hearts. It was as wondrous as magic!

When had I lost the magic?

 

Read more:

http://www.magicalwords.net/specialgueststars/all-about-the-magic/

 

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Vending Illegal, Begging Legal

I was amused by the little girl’s tone of voice.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Casting Game for HERMETIC MILLENNIA

My Book, the Movie, asked me to cast the movie version of THE HERMETIC MILLENNIA. http://mybookthemovie.blogspot.com/2013/12/john-c-wrights-hermetic-millennia.html

Here below are my choices for the casting of the characters in The Hermetic Millennia. Unfortunately, the cast list is rather long, so we will not be able to match all the names to faces. I took the liberty of selecting actors and actresses regardless of their age, or whether they were still living and working.

Hence my first choice is for Menelaus Montrose to be played by

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters — An Observation

This is not an other chapter in this never-ending essay, but only a comment that I wanted to emphasize. Let there be no mistake about what I am objecting to. I am objecting to the idea that a woman has to give up being womanly in order to be a real man. I do not regard feminine nature to be the same as weakness or folly. I do not regard, as some feminists seem to regard, masculinity as synonymous with strong.

Myself, I would like to see strong characters of either sex doing things in stories. The very concept of heroism, of human taking control of the forces around them and doing good, is fundamentally antithetical to the dull dispirited flaccid despair which is the natural moral atmosphere of nihilism and moral relativism, which just so happen to form the moral standard promoted of Political Correctness.

So in other words, even the female characters I here in this essay dismiss as being lame and PC, if they are truly heroines, actually undermine, whether knowingly or not, the PC world view.

In other words, even these attempts by the PC to subvert the dominant paradigm, if they use the concepts of heroism, and show how virtues triumph and vices destroy themselves, they subvert the attempt at subversion.

So, go, Girl Power!

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 5

Part of an ongoing rant where your humble author chews the scenery.  In our last episode, we discovered that Political Correctness is not political program but a cultic worldview with no particular center and no particular goal, bound together only by a general discontent at the sufferings of the world, and the belief that a rebellion destroying the legitimacy of all prior institutions and the erection of a totalitarian utopia will solve everything.

We left asking whether this had anything to do with science fiction. The answer proposed was that it does not, or rather, it has about the same relation that commercial advertisements have to the magazines in what they appear.

The cult wants to put leftwing messages into stories to influence the minds of the reading public and make their leftwing worldview seem like the norm, the default view, so that everything natural and decent and traditional and rational seems unbearably wicked and disgusting.

Speaking of magazines, I feel the an answer to the charge that women in the bad old days before the Women’s Liberation Movement were portrayed in SF as weaklings and ninnies is merely to glance at covers circa 1940-1950. This is hardly a scientific or thorough survey, but then again, we are talking about what subconscious impression is left in the minds of young women reading space adventure stories. I invite anyone to compare them to the same number of images from current SF paperback or trade paperback covers of adventure stories.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters – Part 4

In a previous essay in this space, it was proposed that reviewers who yearn for more strong female characters in science fiction frequently mistake strength for masculinity.

That essay argued that by the nature of male and female biology, a certain stereotypical psychology and set of virtues, priorities and values was necessary and desirable to differentiate the sexes and increase their joy in each other.

The virtues of men are called masculinity; the virtues of women are called femininity. The argument given there was that females can be strong and should be portrayed in stories as strong in the way that is particular to women, but not in the way that is particular to men. What writers should not do, so the previous essay argued, is merely give female characters manly characteristics and call that ‘strong’.

So far, in none of these essays, have I mentioned what the objection is to the effort to making these masculinized glamor-model Amazons into main characters.

I have said I have no objection to Supergirl, who is Kryptonian, and stronger than any mortal, and no objection to Wonder Woman, who is, er, an Amazon. Not only do I have no objection to Batgirl either when played by Yvonne Craig or when drawn by Bruce Timm and voiced by Tara Strong, I actually have an unsightly crush on her.

I have no objection to Mary Sue style wish-fulfillment characters who are good at everything and loved by all men. I do not see them as different from James Bond style wish- fulfillment characters who are good at everything and loved by all women.

I have no objection to angst-ridden leather-clad buxom vixen in highheeled boots fighting her werewolf ex-lover not in highheeled boots with her silver switchblade on the back of her flaming Harley-Davidson motorcycle in the moonlight on a storm-drenched burning train-trestle collapsing beneath the roaring unmanned freight train carrying jet fuel and nitroglycerine bearing down on her. Will she be able to stab the handsome brute in time to swan-dive to safety into the raging piranha-filled and ice-choked river far below, and still find forgiveness and love, before the inevitable explosive break-up of the Transcontinental Railway and her relationship with her brutally handsome demon-lover?

Who am I to criticize any of this? I mean, good grief, I watched RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION and almost enjoyed it. (I actually have rather plebeian tastes. Albeit I suppose a real plebeian would not know the word plebeian. He would use the phrase  the hoi polloi  instead.)

So what is my objection?

My objection is to falseness, insincerity, propaganda, bad drama, bad art, and treason against the muses.  My objection is to using art for propaganda purposes. My objection is to Politically Correct piety. My objection is to the Thought Police.

My objection is to the spirit of totalitarianism.

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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Day of the Doctor

I went to the theater and saw the latest Dr Who episode in 3D . My verdict: more than well worth it.

Steve Moffit is one of my favorite science fiction writers. I say that without making any distinction between media SF and magazine SF, a distinction which I think it proper to discard as irrelevant since around 1990, when GHOST IN THE SHELL appeared on American telly, and we entered the Golden Age of SFF Television.

I am saying that Moffit has written scripts for DR WHO which are stories as good as THE TIME MACHINE by Wells, as good as BY HIS BOOTSTRAPS by Heinlein, as good as DINOSAUR BEACH by Laumer, as good as THE BIG TIME by Lieber, as good as any and every other time travel story or time paradox story you’d care to name. The days when literary SF types could look down their nose at media SF types are dead.

My friend Keith de Candido has praise of this episode (with spoilers) over at Tor.com. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/11/a-moment-of-heroism-thinky-thoughts-on-doctor-whos-qthe-day-of-the-doctorq

I agree with his compliments and disagree respectfully with his criticisms. I thought the spaceman thing was perfect, and perfectly set up. I thought all the Christmas Specials were fine (except for the wee thing that none of them mention what Christmas is, which I believe has been illegal in England since Cromwell or since the modern version of Cromwell, Political Correctness.)

Happy Birthday, Doctor.

 

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.