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| The image is apropos of nothing in particular – I just really like my WH40K lore |
Reader SC wrote in to raise a few very interesting points about my writing which I thought were worth sharing in full:
I noticed your blog when I was looking for actual evidence in my quest to determine what the feud was between MMA and Krav Maga. You provided one of the few cogent-sounding responses amidst the plethora of opinions oozing from mouths too large to remain closed. [That would be this post here.] For that, I thank you.
I read through more of your thoughts and opinions, from Gamer Gate to Metroid to Transgenderism to the Second Amendment, and I find myself equal parts annoyed, amused, and appreciative. On the one hand, most of your views align with mine, you poke merciless fun at the Left that I can’t help but laugh at, and you’ve an excellent vocabulary. On the other hand, you seem to have bought into every trope, cliché, and stereotype that exists to describe the Right, and your rhetoric devolves sometimes into what can only be described as a rant, at a level that seems beneath you. Truth and objectivity seem to be important to you, so I’ll list a few examples that informed my opinion:
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You cited a YouTube video as evidence that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was a false-flag trick. No further evidence beyond opinion, just that video.
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You were angered by a different YouTube video that had a group of four geeky-looking dudes getting owned by Chuck Liddell for shits and giggles. “Soyboys” they may be, but you must have understood they didn’t actually think they were going to beat anybody? That they created the video purely for the entertainment value of seeing them fail? And yet, virtually every other word in that article was either an insult toward them, or a reaffirmation of a point you’d already made; you are very manly, and you love Sparta.
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Domain Query: The Brotherhood was an excellent post overall, but one thing left me very puzzled; the Way, which seemed to be a central part of it, is incompatible with almost everything else you espouse. You seem to accept nothing as it is; you have partial feelings about anything you don’t fully understand, like any reasonable human; the thinking you do about the world is entirely done through the lens of yourself and your views (mayhap this is the human condition, but it is true nonetheless); you have many desires; resentment and complaint seem to be the basis of your entire blog…In fact, rules 2, 6, 7, and perhaps 15 and 16 seem to be the only ones that you do follow. Perhaps I misunderstood the Way’s importance to your post, but it not only occupies the beginning but the end, as well.
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As an end point, your near-fanatical devotion to Donald Trump. I agree, he’s much preferable to another Clinton, and he seems to have made a good-faith effort to keep his campaign promises, but surely you realize he’s as corrupt and despotic as any other politician? It just happens that his views align with mine and yours on some important matters. He’s not Ron Paul, or even Rand Paul. He was the tepid Budweiser that was preferable to the warm, flat Coors Light.
I’ve gone on long enough to abolish any trace of the laconic wit which we both seem to start with, and end without. Suffice it to say, I spend a good deal of my life trying to understand apparent contradictions, in myself and others, and I believe I’ve seen such a contradiction in you. I’m hoping, somehow, that you or some other paradox that I ask after will be the last, and I’ll understand why so many people, probably myself included, walk about arguing vociferously in two directions at once without realizing…but I doubt it. Duality is the human curse, that we cannot have both truth and satisfaction.
Before I answer the specific points raised here, I would like to take a moment to thank SC, and indeed other readers who write in with similar comments. As I state clearly in the Rules of my blog, I encourage civil commentary and criticism and have no problem at all with answering reader questions as long as they are rooted in fact and evidence. The questions above clearly are, and show an obvious desire to learn.
So I took some time to write out some responses to the points raised. Here they are:
On Buying Into the Tropes of the Right
As SC states above, there is some evidence to suggest that I have bought into a number of stereotypes about the Right. I asked for clarification as to exactly what these tropes were – not because I do not know what they are, but simply because it is easier to confirm or deny whether they apply once the tropes themselves are defined.
The response was as follows:
As to the specific tropes and cliches I referred to, gun-toting, hyper-masculine, judgemental, Christian (I am aware you’re not a Christian yourself, but your writing shows a strong preference for them), anti-immigrant, Trump supporting, uncompassionate, racially and religiously discriminating, anti-trans, patriarchal, Americans-as-the-Chosen-People…
To which I say: yep. Mostly, anyway.
It is true, I am indeed extremely strongly in favour of guns (and knives, and tomahawks, and muskets, and bows, and arrows, and tanks, and artillery, and sharp rocks, and… well, you get the idea).
I am also exceptionally strongly in favour of free speech – though I think that Vox Day has a very good point when he argues that the First Amendment is observably dead and that the ancient anti-blasphemy laws that criminalise outrages against God and the Church probably need to be brought back.
I regard abortion as a mortal sin. I think that homosexuality, particularly of the male kind, is disgusting, and I find the idea of gay “marriage” to be ridiculous in the extreme. I am highly patriarchal and traditionalist, I am unapologetically in favour of Christianity over all other religions, and as far as I am concerned, trannies are mentally ill degenerate freaks.
I certainly do not deny these things. What should pique the reader’s curiosity, though, is the fact that I, personally, should not by rights be any of these things.
See, I’m not white. I’m not American. I’m not Christian. I don’t own a gun – because I can’t, I live in the loony liberal northeast, in a state with perhaps the most ridiculously stupid gun control laws in the entire country.
I’m simply a highly educated foreigner who used that education to try to see through the lies I was taught throughout my life. This has led me to some naturally very uncomfortable but inescapable conclusions – many of which are diametrically opposed to my own personal circumstances.
My hard-line views on immigration, for instance, are very unusual among non-resident aliens in the USA. I hold them because I try to obey American law and I love this country – and as a result I get severely cheesed off when I see lawbreakers invited in and given red-carpet treatment, when I myself must follow the rules.
I did not always think the way I do now, and I can easily foresee that in 5 more years my views on a few subjects will also have changed or evolved somewhat. As I also pointed out in my email response, it is worth noting that my views on a number of subjects have changed over the years, as is natural and necessary – if you read my writing from 2013, you will see a very different philosophy from the one that guides me in 2018.
Simply put, I try to go where the facts of life point me. If the truth about something is uncomfortable for me, well, that is really my problem – the truth does not care in the slightest what you or I think of it. I am not always successful in this endeavour, to be sure; no doubt I have some ways to go in order to accept certain truths as they are. But then, that is rather the point of life – it is an evolution of mind, body, and soul.
On Ranting
It is certainly true that my writing can be described as “ranting”, and fairly often. I make no apologies for this. Remember that my blog serves as an outlet for opinions that I cannot normally express in “polite” society – because that same society has moved and continues to move leftwards, away from sense, sanity, and decency.
Let us keep in mind also that the best forms of argument combine both dialectic – carefully reasoned arguments and logical derivations – and rhetoric – which can take the form of rants. There is nothing particularly wrong with this. The few readers and commenters who have met me in person, or spoken to me over the phone, can attest that I am actually (usually) pretty mellow in person and generally prefer to listen instead of speak.
On Syria
With respect to the point about the Syria attack – it should be noted that in the post in question, I never actually said that I, personally, think that the chemical weapons attack was a false-flag operation. I said that the Russians think it was.
SC, to his great credit, followed up and readily conceded this point.
The official stories promoted by both the White House and the gaystream media – two institutions normally at loggerheads – simply do not make sense. In less than 48 hours it has become at least somewhat evident that the Russian-built missile systems deployed around Damascus significantly degraded the power of the American strike, that the strike itself was deliberately of limited size and scope in order to avoid tipping us all into WWIII, and that it is still quite unclear whether Assad actually gassed his own people.
Nor did it make sense for him to do so, given the balance of power in Syria at the moment. The fact is that the dictator Assad, who is a very nasty piece of work but is nonetheless essential to maintaining secular stability in the region, had no incentive at all to gas his own people when he was on the cusp of total victory against ISIS.
I subscribe strongly to Occam’s Razor, and when the facts on the ground do not match the narrative, then I conclude that the narrative itself is wrong.
On Soyboys
It is fair to take me to task for hating on those specific soyboys, the Try Guys – until you watch some of their other videos, which I did both during and after the writing of that post.
Those four low-T Betas may well be doing what they do for entertainment purposes. That does not mean that the rest of us have to like them, or their work. They are free to be mincing effete little bronies, and the rest of us are free to mock them for it.
My specific issues with them reflect my broader problem with soyboys in modern society – the soyboy is now being upheld by the culture as “normal” for men, whereas I and others like me absolutely despise their physical and mental weakness and their lack of any recognisably masculine traits.
I do not, by the way, pretend to be any sort of hyper-masculine badass. I make no secret of the fact that I have many deficiencies in my life. I am no womaniser; I’ll be the first to admit that, while my theoretical understanding of the red pill is pretty strong, my practical application of it is weak. But it is because I admit my weaknesses and try, however badly, to fix them, that I find the weak and effete nancies of BuzzFeed to be highly irritating.
History teaches us that cultures which glorify weakness and mock strength do not last very long. Western culture is rapidly heading toward collapse, in large part precisely because of this worship of weakness. The Try Guys are merely a symptom; it is the disease that I cannot stand.
On Adherence to the Way
With respect to living up to the Way of the Warrior, as espoused by the legendary swordsman Musashi, certainly I do not adhere to every last aspect of his code. And that is because that code is an idealisation of what a warrior should strive to be.
While I contend that I in fact follow quite a few more of Musashi’s rules than SC stated, the Way is still an ideal that men must strive to live up to. Doing so is difficult, costly, uncomfortable, and often leads to brutal disappointments. Yet the Way provides a blueprint for living an honourable life, filled with achievement, contentment, and harmony with the laws of Nature and therefore of Nature’s Creator.
The same is true for Christians, the vast majority of whom fail, routinely and repeatedly, to live up to the Lord’s words – which does not stop them from trying to do so. Very few real Christians that I know would claim with a straight face that they are particularly good Christians – but they try to be, nonetheless.
Parenthetically, I also strongly disagree with the idea that “resentment and complaint seem to be the basis of [my] entire blog” – I invite anyone who thinks so to read my writings for Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day for the last 5 years. Just as a man should not be content to sit by and let injustice and madness rule over him, so too he should be grateful for all of the good things that he has been given in his life.
On Loyalty to the God-Emperor
I think it is fair to say that my “near-fanatical devotion to Donald Trump” is nothing of the sort. If you read this post, written on the day after the God-Emperor’s victory, it is easy to see that I clearly stated that Donald Trump is not America’s saviour. He has merely bought America some more time to save itself. Whether America and the wider Western world uses that time as it should, is up to the peoples of the West. So far the jury is out. I have said as much here, and here, and here.
The value of Donald Trump comes from the fact that he is not like your typical politician – while he is a vastly flawed man, with a truly gigantic and problematic ego, a very hot temper, and a propensity to shoot off his mouth without stopping to think about the consequences, he represents only the first stage of a hard swing of the pendulum back towards traditionalism, nationalism, and overall sanity.
The best way to look at Donald Trump is a step along Cicero’s cycle of government, leading from mob rule, to aristocratic rule, to monarchic rule, and all the way back again – this is elucidated quite nicely by a post from last August by AntiDem.
Questions and Answers
As stated above, SC’s questions were interesting, on point, and useful. I encourage this strongly and am happy to answer similar questions from readers – time permitting, of course. SC did follow up to my responses, and I think the last paragraph of that follow-up is worth quoting here:
To the point, I’m aware that most people would stand aghast that I dared to email them critical thoughts about THEIR blog in the first place. But you are not most people, and I knew there would be something to learn from debating with you. I set out to find a hole, a gap, an inconsistency…something that would make you one of them. Understand this was not out of malice or anger, but simply what I do with every person I meet, especially if they seem too real. It’s the sceptic’s defining trait, to look for trouble where there seemingly is none. What I learned is that there is at least one other person out there that shares a human spark, and uses his brain for the purpose which it was intended. I will not call you friend, for I have not earned the right. Instead, I will call you Brother, and be glad of your existence.
Amen to that.
1 Comment
This…right here: "But it is because I admit my weaknesses and try, however badly, to fix them, that I find the weak and effete nancies of BuzzFeed to be highly irritating." Well said, Didact.
Life has little inherent value, and is not sacred of itself. It is what is done with that life that gives it value. There are crabs scuttling on the beach whose lives are more sacred than whole nations of humans, because they TRY.