From the Pen of Brad Torgersen
I heard this from our Puppy Pack leader from last year, the inestimable Brad Togersen. He represents the moderate wing of the Resistance. His words on the ongoing retaliations that followed:
what I’ve noticed (so far, for my part) is that certain small-time authors and certain small-time presses haven’t been shy about chinning me off.
I had one small press dump me from an anthology, despite a contract, after several other authors made a fuss. And I recently had one author walk off an anthology I am in; the editor stuck to his guns, and I was never asked to leave. So there is definitely a radioactivity taking place, against me, among some of my open-minded, caring, compassionate, ever-so-tolerant friends in the field.
It’s disappointing, but not unexpected. I knew (in April) that I was finished among the SF/F cognoscenti. Once the cries of racism (and
worse) began, with a full-court-press slander-laden media smear, it was
obvious that my betters in the field were evicting me permanently from
polite society.
Frankly, after long reflection, I welcome it. I’ve never felt more sure
of myself — of what I want to say, and what I want to do — in this business.
I had a wonderfully candid exchange with Orson Scott Card, who went down
this road (himself) a long time ago. Science Fiction *desperately* needs its conservative and libertarian voices. Speaking loudly, and proudly, unafraid of the liberal mob. Taking the arrows in the chest plate, then brushing them off, standing back up, and growling, “Is that all you’ve got?”
They (the cognoscenti) will never love us. We don’t need their permission.
We just need to tell the truth.
My comment: One difficulty, perhaps insurmountable, to any proposed peace between the puppykickers and the Sad Puppies is this: the puppykickers are merely the science fiction wing of the SJWs, which are merely the arm of the ‘Intersectionists’ who went after gaming and SFF and other idle pastimes.
The Intersectionists are an alliance of feminists, pervertarians, race-baiters, marxists, and ninnies who realized that not just economics, but every human ill could be deflected from a guilty conscience by blaming someone else: Jews, Bankers, Whites, Males, Non-perverts, Non-adulterers, Christians, anyone else. This is Cultural Marxism, which is the modern mutation of the stupid ideal of Marxism that flourished after the fall of the Soviet Empire killed economic Marxism. If you cannot kill Christendom by claiming that the free market is unfair, you try to kill it by claiming everything is unfair, from marriage to heterosexuality to being colorblind about race to, well, everything.
Marxism is merely the latest heresy springing out of a rebellion against the Church that goes back to the First Century, and, even earlier, among Ahab and idolaters among the Jews, among antediluvians, among fallen men and fallen angels. The lineage of the deliberate embrace of evil has its roots not only in the far past, but outside the realm of time altogether.
Now, what made Marxist particularly virulent, and Cultural Marxism more so, is that is is a hydra without a head, a mob action. Once the rabblerouser or withchunter has stirred up the mob to violence, he has no rein to check it. The mob will rampage for reasons of its own until it loses interest and disperses.
The advantage of such decentralized destabilization is that effective counterattacks are confused by the lack of a central target. The disadvantage is the peace is impossible, because there is no trumpet to blow retreat, no herald to fly a white flag, no king’s sword to break in half, no hatchet to bury.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
