I recently highlighted NK Jemisin’s speech in Australia, which pointed out the disgusting degree of racism still common in the US. One small part of the speech noted a remarkable recent occurence.
…the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new president. There were two candidates — one of whom was a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole. In this election he lost by a landslide… but he still earned ten percent of the vote.
It was clear who she was talking about: flaming hatemonger and regressive thug Theodore Beale, who also goes by the name Vox Day. Not a good person, a really nasty, unstable, vicious wackaloon. And of course, Vox Day noticed and flew into a furious snit, demanding apologies and threatening lawsuits, because he’s so annoyed at being called a racist.
So he wrote a post denying the accusations and making his demands. He also insists that he can’t be kicked out of the Science Fiction Writers of America because he’s a paid-up lifetime member.
If you go to his page now, here’s a sample of what you’ll find.
Reality isn’t racist, Mr. Sanford. Neither is history. They simply are. And you can’t escape the fact that Ms Jemisin lied about me and about the state laws of Texas and Florida. As some of my Australian readers have already pointed out, Ms Jemisin has no idea what she’s talking about concerning Australian race relations either.
Oh, that doesn’t sound so angry or racist, you may be thinking. But what you’re seeing there is the stripped-down, cleaned-up version of his original racist rant, probably revised when he realized that threatening lawsuits for being called a racist while flinging racist insults was probably not a wise idea.
Fortunately, screen shots of the original tirade were captured. It’s rather different. Another short excerpt from the ugly:
So, perhaps their assertions should be taken with at least a small grain of salt. And it should be obvious that, being a libertarian, I am not actively attempting to take away anyone’s “most basic rights”. Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious reason that she is not.
She is lying about the laws in Texas and Florida too. The laws are not there to let whites “just shoot people like me, without consequence, as long as they feel threatened by my presence,” those self-defense laws have been put in place to let whites defend themselves by shooting people, like her, who are savages engaged in attacking white people.
Keep in mind that Jemisin is black. Here’s Theodore Beale coming right out and saying that while she’s human, she’s not fully equal to a white man, himself (and please, his invocation of “genetic science” is reeking bullshit). And then he says that the racist “stand your ground” laws some states have in place are there to protect white people like him from savages like her.
Or how about this?
Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support.
Racist as hell.
Hmm. Why do you think he felt it necessary to cut that kind of racist noise out of his post?
There is now a rising swell of people calling for Beale’s expulsion from the SFWA (and apparently there are provisions within the organizations by-laws that allow for that). It sounds like a good idea to me. Remember, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and Beale certainly is setting a low standard. I’m surprised they’ve let him poison the organization for so long.
Then comes the tricky question. What about the 10% who actually voted for that turd?
Oh, wait, I didn’t dig deep enough into the sewer. Beale did not edit his complaint; he posted a cleaned-up version for circulation. The racist rant is still online in all of its feculent glory! The man has no shame at all.
Please note that in the election Beale lost, by a 90:10 margin, only about 30% of the membership voted.
So his constituency was around 3% of an organization with around 1500 members. I’m not too surprised to find that percentage of racist bampots in any mostly-American organization; if anything the proportion is hearteningly low.
There’s also the fact that not only did Beale write a racist and sexist rant against Jemisin, he also used a unmoderated SFWA twitter — intended for authors to promote useful things to other SFWA members — to make sure everyone saw his rant. So, even if Beale wanted to argue that his harassment of Jemisin was private and none of the SFWA’s business, that doesn’t hold water given that he deliberately used SFWA’s resources to make sure a wide an audience as possible saw it.
While I don’t object to tossing out someone who openly says that other members and potential members are savages and not equally human, I would give an extra push to someone who does that AND uses the organization’s membership tools to make sure the targeted people see it.
They’re what Tlacaxipehualiztli is for.
Charlie Stross done just read us, and he’s right gurl.
The comments on his post are just as racist and full of good ol’ boys happy to defend that racist drivel and use racist and sexually harassing commentary against Jemisin. No surprise there, sadly.
It’s nice to see that Beale thought it necessary to tone it down, even though it’s futile since the internet never forgets.
Regarding expulsion, that’s SFWA’s business. But I wouldn’t go around saying that Scalzi and Stross are anything like Beale, even though they’re also SFWA members. AFAIK, the qualifier is being published in science fiction, not being a racist jerk.
@5, Beale has spent years cultivating his little patch of online slime. As ye reap, shall ye sow.
But isn’t he the intertubes super-duper genius intellect? Didn’t he invent a 64 button-mouse, which is 63 buttons better than that loser Steve Jobs was ever able to build? Look at how smart he is, he quotes latin in the subtitle of his blogspot blog. For fuck’s sake latin! And he had had a mildly popular techno song twenty years ago. I mean techno is known for being the most musically complex genera out there, besides every other genera. How can this, God among men, be wrong? For fuck’s sake, he speaks elvish!!1!
He’s just butthurt that Jemisin is actually a respected, talented, successful novelist.
@1 Charlie Stross
I think your assumption that every shithead in the SFWA voted and voted for Beale is not very reasonable. It is much more reasonable to assume that the shithead quotient of voters is not significantly different than that of the organization at large. Not to mention the fact that there are probably at least a few shitheads who didn’t vote for Beale because he was an asshole joke candidate.
I just posted this in the lounge the other day on racial bias in stand your ground laws. Black woman shoots in self-defense, means to hit ceiling above the guy to scare him, hits him on accident but doesn’t kill him, he admits he was about to beat her up and she had every right to be scared and do that. White man walks in on his wife and her boyfriend, who he has known about for some time, and shoots the guy three times until he is good and dead, and claims stand your ground even though nobody was in danger of anything and he knew it.
Same state, same stand your ground law.
He got off free.
She got 20 years in prison.
I think Theodore Beale may have just defined a new low for racist arsehats everywhere – it is almost impressive that he has such a capacity for mindless, reactionary hatred. I am sure lesser bigoted jerks everywhere look upon him with awe.
Holytape @ 8;
And a shiny new internets for you, methinks!
That said, my keyboard has a bone to pick with you – it didn’t want the unsolicted bath it just received… ;-)
We could equally well assume that the 70% who didn’t vote were all racist dorks who were too stupid to find the ballot and send it in. So all we know is that the percentage of racists in the SFWA is somewhere between 3% and 73%, with 10% measured in one sample. It probably lies closer to 10 than to either of the extremes.
He didn’t assume everyone voted, he states 30% did, he generously assumed all racists voted thus capping them at 3% its’s quite likely it’s higher because some assholes voted against him on literary grounds, or didn’t vote
10% of the 30% that voted are the minimum number of shit stains. number is likely higher
Beale: “…it took my English and German ancestors more than one thousand years to become fully civilized after their first contact with advanced Greco-Roman civilization”
The Japanese did it in under half the time. I wonder what delayed the English and Germans for so long. Christianity, perhaps?
And I wonder where the Chinese and the mediaeval Arabs fit into his scheme.
This guy hillariously proves how easy it is to potentially get elected in this “prestigious organization”
One bullshit awful book and history of belching farts=10% vote? quite a standar were setting!
From Wikipedia:
Who would have thought?
Also, from the OP:
Really, you don’t say?
I’m thinking of diagrams. Venn diagrams.
I love the myth that technology is one progressive ladder. not like we didn’t get major civilizations that missed simple techs or platued due to missing key innovations or resource deficiencies. the chinese where never most advanced in the world but got lapped because they didn’t develop glassware needed for chemistry. the incans never built and empite without discovering the wheel. Africans weren’t taken as slaves because of their agricultural expertise, Iroquois never developed representational government independent of the greek, Europe never stalled until they rediscovered Roman and Greek knowledge
Of course he’s a libertarian. He bases his life on sf
why is it always me who has to post this?
Oh Vox Day. Anytime I want to be embarrassed to share a race with someone, all I have to do is be told about something he said.
Funny story about a sad little shit: Many years ago, we got into an online argument over, of all things, whether or not Wing Commander had a score board (which he felt was proof that men don’t oppress women using technology, long story). I started to read him in the aftermath of his cronies showing up at my blog to threaten me. At the time, his girlfriend’s online nym had ‘bunny’ or something of the kind in it. After encouraging his cronies to take a shit on myself and a friend for being female (also for working in the sex biz and being queer), his girlfriend made a comment about it on his blog.
His slime patch was quick to tell her what to do about having an opinion online (kitchen, make sandwiches, shut up and take it, etc), even though she was agreeing with them. Beale had to wade in and tell the idiots he’d cultivated that they couldn’t tell his woman what to do, but only because she belonged to him. After all, he was the only one who could tell her what to do. (The fun part was that he began, if memory serves, by whining that they were being mean to his girlfriend.)
The tl;dr version: he’s a shameless, SHAMELESS hypocrite, and bleating out things vaguely associated with Greek society appears to be his only way to console himself for being an utterly disingenuous failure of a human being. His big contribution to the world, or so he appears to believe, is being born white and with a cock.
Someone get him the world’s smallest trophy for his achievements.
hmm, auto spam-filtered.
I was only trying to post this [replace * with o]:
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/uploaded/1897/V*x-Day.jpg
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/uploaded/1897/Vox-Day.jpg
Vox,
Undoubtedly this is also one of David Barton’s favorite lines and I’m sure he doesn’t understand what it means either.
But this is not worth talking about, because racist nuts are everywhere and nowhere all at once, racism doesn’t affect me, and the subject of racism isn’t substantive.
(/sarcasm)
Also, by calling out Beale’s hatred and bigotry, YOU ARE JUST AS BAD.
(/sarcasm)
It should be carved of fake ivory and shaped like a penis.
Indeed. According to genetic science, non-Africans have significant admixture from archaic Sapiens species (Neanderthals, Denisovans, and probably others waiting to be identified), making them *less* “Sapiens Sapiens”.
That’s what he meant, right? :)
(and yes, I know that some African groups also have admixture from African archaics. I just couldn’t resist pointing out the obvious whole-leg-in-mouth moment)
mythbri
Surely though, “you can’t rely on self-selected groups to be representative of the whole, especially one particular self-selected subset of SFWA members on one subject is representative.”
I wonder what some of these racist twits will think when they learn that the only “pure” homo sapiens are from Sub-Saharan Africa.
“The researchers, under the direction of Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, found that 2.5 percent of the genome of an average human living outside Africa today is made up of Neanderthal DNA. The average modern African has none.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121012-neanderthals-science-paabo-dna-sex-breeding-humans/
And I see that garlic has made my point while I was typing. :)
There is no one I would like to do physical violence to based on what they write on the internet.
Teddy Beale makes me almost want to reconsider that policy. There is something….spectacularly unpleasant about him. He strikes me as someone who is just itching for a really thorough arse kicking. I think it would actual count as a medical intervention and possibly do him a lot of good.
I am not proud of these thoughts, but like history and reality, they just are. ;-)
Louis
He also wrote that he’s not saying sluts should get raped, but it’s not a tragedy when they do and frequently refers to himself as an alpha male in unironic fashion.
“Western civilized conduct”? I guess Victorian men always holding doors open for ladies makes up for the Opium wars. Or was that just the Chinese forcing the noble west to attack them savagely.
You and me both, Louis. Definitely falls into the category of “If he was bleeding on the sidewalk, I would walk over him. Literally.”
Is Vox Day still around? I hadn’t heard from Theo in a long time. And he fancies himself a speculative fiction author? Makes sense. The Turner Diaries is a pretty popular work of speculative fiction.
Vote Vox out. Nothing less than total exclusion from the mainstream will do.
Oddly, Beale seems to have missed the part of “Western codes of civilised conduct” exemplified by various equal rights movements and legislations.
Frog,
I’m going to end the speculation tree right there! Because I think I could become “imaginative”, and my pacifism card would be removed!
Louis
SallyStrange: And it should have the following motto: nam optimus expletionem. I could be moved to play a tiny violin when it was presented.
Also worth reading:
http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/reconciliation-a-response-to-theodore-beale/
Well, as long as what he means by “alpha” is the version that is normally kept in-house and not suitable for release, I don’t see a big problem. Regrettably, it seems QC policy may have been violated.
I hope when they kick him out that it can be done in approximation of old military custom – march him onto the parade ground, rip off his stripes and cut off his buttons, and leave him totally disgraced. Then perhaps a break with custom, to ward off the highly predicable martyr’s response: pat him on his shit-filled head and give him a lolly to make him feel better. Maybe even give him a hanky for his wee tears.
Oh, Vox Day. An endless source of amusement mixed with self-loathing brought on by sharing a genus with this dope.
His history is equal parts interesting and revealing, especially in light of many of his, erm, opinions. I suggest anyone not familiar with Theodore Beale read up on him, but the TL;dr version is thus: daddy was a crazy tax protestor who fled when the Feds wised up to his idiocy. And who exposed daddy Beale and helped the IRS bring him to justice? Why, none other than mommy Beale!
I see that bad news travels. I was going to email PZ on this one, since this burning paper bag full of dog product ended up on the SFWA’s doorstep so quickly that I thought he might miss it.
After reading the quoted material from Beale’s screed, I have to wonder how long it’ll take incoming president Steven Gould to resurrect the SFWA’s reputation because of this and the editorial mess involving the Bulletin (i.e., the Mike Resnick/Barry Malzberg debacle, among recent others). Talk about jobs nobody in their right mind would want…
I see that bad news travels fast. I was going to email PZ on this one, since this burning paper bag full of dog product ended up on the SFWA’s doorstep so quickly that I thought he might miss it.
After reading the quoted material from Beale’s screed, I have to wonder how long it’ll take incoming president Steven Gould to resurrect the SFWA’s reputation because of this and the editorial mess involving the Bulletin (i.e., the Mike Resnick/Barry Malzberg debacle, among recent others). Talk about jobs nobody in their right mind would want…
My apologies for the previous double post. Arrrrrgh, etc.
As to Daz’s referencing of the Foz Meadows piece: let me point out that re-reading Beale’s screed there convinces me that he is as much of an irredeemable asshole (if not more) as previously advertised.
Ok, I am a little bit out of the loop, so help me out. Is this the guy who used to go around to atheist forums pretending to be an atheist, but “a better class of atheist”? The guy who justified his trolling of atheists by claiming that he wanted to push back against atheists who are “bigoted against certain ideas”? The guy whose main argument tactic was to reply to any disagreement with, “No, dumb dumb.” Is this the guy who pretended to be an expert in physics who described the big bang theory as “materialist mythology?”
If so, I think I’ve seen him in action.
Dr. Cheeselove. Physics is not my area of expertise, so I wasn’t going to touch this, but yes indeed, you have the right….. intellectual…..
Somehow, I don’t think so. Two compilations of his, er, “philosophical discourse”, such as it is:
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2010/11/99-vox-day-and-his-dad.html
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Theodore_Beale
Short answer: no. Unless he’s massively flip-flopped on what he seems to believe, that is.
mouthyb, the internet is a small world after all.
It’s chilling to see how much of an unrepentant bigot he is. There’s definitely something pathological about pretending to be an atheist just to troll atheist forums nonstop.
Teddy Beale makes me almost want to reconsider that policy. There is something….spectacularly unpleasant about him.
It’s probably the neaderthal in him.
I am going to pop some popcorn and melt some butter and prepare some salt, just waiting for Scalzi’s inevitable in-weighing on this matter.
I expect a suit to be immediately filed by the Neanderthal Defense League in the wake of their being compared to the likes of Beale. How…demeaning.
Wow.
I’m only familiar with Vox from reading his Wikipedia entry and what little I have gleaned of him in the time I have been here. Now this post. What a repugnant individual.
Marcus:
Prepare some salt?
That involves more than grabbing the shaker?
Prepare some salt?
That involves more than grabbing the shaker?
I grind it to the consistency of flour; it’s better on popcorn that way.
To any publisher reading this: I am an unpublished SF author with a novel all ready to go. If you will publish it, I will do the following:
1. Join SFWA.
2. Vote to boot Vox Day’s revolting ass right out of the organization.
3. Everybody wins!
It is my cunning plan which cannot fail.
So is Theodore Beale
I don’t even have any table salt in my house anymore. I buy the chunky kind and have a nice little mortar and pestle that I keep on the dining table to grind up and use. Some times I with I had some pre-ground just to use for random stuff, but for the most part I love it this way. I often toss in some dried rosemary or thyme to the mortar for flavor.
Oh, well, Beale is religious, but I’ve seen him flirt with atheism because it’s thought to be an intellectual description. That man couldn’t find an argument and proof with Siri and a team of guides.
Surprising that VD’s mouthbreathing stormtroopers of dumb haven’t showed up here yet.
The bloody spam filter has nixed my every attempt to post the picture of this guy holding a flaming sword at erection angle. Let the record show that such a photo exists, and can be viewed with minimal g**gle-fu.
Around 3% think they want as their representative a man that insists 3 of my 5 best friends are savages, and that the law needs to contain provisions to safely shoot them to death if he gets the willies.
I am sooooooooo heartened. Thanks so much, Charles, for your sagacious and reasonable perspective. I would have hated for the conversation to get shrill.
I wonder what some of these racist twits will think when they learn that the only “pure” homo sapiens are from Sub-Saharan Africa.
In fact, that’s exactly what he is claiming. The irony…
#62: Because the image is hosted on a site that also hosts many of Mabus’s screeds. One way I block him is to block the sites he links to that contain his spam.
This will help. In the future, use this link:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2013/06/Vox-Day.jpg
Every time I see that photo I just think “What an unmitigated tit.” and feel slightly sorry for him.
Louis
It would seem that Tony was not around when VD’s flying monkey would come to this blog en mass. That was the time when PZ would regularly blog about VD.
Tony, just because you need a good laugh. Most of the old timers should know what image I linked to.
Oops! I see that PZ linked to a bigger image.
Man, that looks painful. Does he know you can get ointments for that?
PZ’s link #66
Janine link #68
bwahahhahaaahhahaaa
snort
hahahahahah
*cough*
That pur wee man.
Oh Jebus, the flaming sword picture. That picture is absolutely a masterpiece of irony (dramatic, especially.) To this day, I can’t look at that picture and not feel incredibly sorry for him.
He looks like he’s not quite sure how that happened. “Hey. This sword is on fire. I’ll be damned.”
His stance is just … bad.
My kendo friends just go *tsk*.
Mouthyb,
I know! I sometimes encounter his scrawlings and want to rend him limb from limb, and then I think about that picture and just get overwhelmed by how pathetic he is.
Louis
You know, Louis, I have the same urge. I really, REALLY want to pop him in the mouth, and then I think about what a sad little sack he is. What can you say about someone who insists on rendering all parts of their life down to the least impressive and least admirable, but doesn’t realize they are?
Mouthyb,
What can you say? I’d say “Ah Mr Beale, there truly is no beginning to your talents. How did you sneak past the lifeguard into the shallow end of the gene pool?”
Louis
Louis, I believe I just guffawed.
Charlie@1:
I understand you’re trying to defend an organisation you belong to and believe in (as I do), but that was a terrible statistical argument. You could have claimed that Beale’s constituency was as low as 3%, but by the same logic, it could be as high as 73%. Obviously neither answer is very likely.
If you use good statistical technique (and you don’t need to be a stats guru, you can use an online calculator like this one). With the usual 95% confidence intervals, you get an overall support for Beale of 7.23% to 12.77% among SFWA members. Even if you use the ridiculously conservative 99.9% confidence level, the range is 5.35% to 14.65%.
Even at the low end, it’s pretty dismaying. And while one could argue that the more racist/misogynist bloc in the SFWA turned out to vote in numbers, why didn’t the non-racist/misogynist bloc also turn out in numbers to oppose this awful nomination? If I were an SFWA member, only death or a coma would have stopped me voting against Beale.
I believe he (Teddy) is also known as the “narcissistic racist sexist homophobic dipshit” I always sing-song that to the tune of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. I tried to come up with a few more “alternate” lines to sing with it, but I fail hard at poetry and/or song writing.
Hi, Ray!
*even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious*
@chrislawson: That assume voters are a random sample, which wouldn’t be correct.
Ray:
Narcissistic racist sexist homophobic dipshit
bothering to talk with him’s like swimming in a tar pit
when it comes to decency he doesn’t have the toolkit
narcissistic racist sexist homophobic dipshit!
(Hum diddleiddleiddle hum diddle aye….)
chigau@81,
Indeed
Also, Howdy-do!
Chris@83, Bravo! Now, why can’t I do that? Must be some sort of mental block.
I’ll have to see if Cuttlefish has taken a swing at that, maybe if I have time tomorrow. For now it’s beddy-bye for me.
G’night to all.
Most people can’t rattle that kind of stuff off very fast. I just happen to have a particularly useless and non-remunerative gift that way.
I’m still amazed people like this both exist and can manage to tie their own shoes without getting their fingers caught in the knot.
And what a set of knots it is. I followed the RationalWiki link to Evangelical Realism and read the post about VD’s attempt to refute the problem of evil…which he does (or tries to) by flatly contradicting all of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam vis-a-vis the attributes of Yahweh!
Seriously, he basically says “God knows a lot and is super-powerful, but isn’t omniscient or omnipotent, and anyway omni* is a potential, not an actuality.” Aside from the big fat [citation needed] that springs, and aside from this flying in the face of every movement not called “Open Theology,” it doesn’t distinguish God from another being who knows a lot and is very powerful: Satan
I have to wonder if that’s a coincidence. Yahweh, as modern Christians have him, is the very devil himself. And people wonder why I’m scared to leave the house…
We did see a large uptick in election turnout. We also saw very few (zero to one, depending on how you take it) sarcastic votes in the presidential race, and usually there’s a smattering.
The assumption that the 10% are people who actually support Beale’s policies is where I differ from the statistical analysis. Not all of our members are active on the internet. Some will have only read his campaign platform; some will have voted for Beale without even looking at the platform simply because they were voting against Steve Gould (who was seen as Scalzi’s pick).
The 10% number is interesting but doesn’t starkly mean what it appears to mean. 10% of the organization either support his views, don’t support them but also don’t feel that the views are sufficient to prevent voting for him, or have low information about them. I don’t know what the proportions are and it’s pointless to guess.
In one way, it doesn’t matter because — 10%. It’s still the figure that wields power and will use it that way.
On the other hand, if we’re going to be talking about absolute numbers of “shitstains” — you can’t easily draw identical conclusions about the characters of groups going in with different levels of motive and information.
I think the general point is more important than the number anyway. These views are apparently not outside the Overton window of modern American discourse (or discourse in sf/f).
Also, damn it, what do we have to do to get a positive mention here? Get together some people to write a round robin story about PZ and His Bioengineered Squid Minions? ;-)
(In seriousness, I really appreciate the links to Nora’s and Kameron’s pieces. I’m glad they are getting wide distribution.)
As someone who downloaded Vox Day’s Irrational Atheist and read through the first quarter of it before realizing I didn’t really give a fuck, and as someone who went on to follow Deacon Duncan’s takedowns of that same book shortly after, and that last God As Game Designer argument…that was Vox at his finest. As in, his most amoral and disingenuous. I also liked the part where he explained away omniscience by comparing it to owning a book instead of using it to look something up. Knowledge works in mysterious ways!
Chris, that was a thing of beauty and a joy t o behold. The second I have some disposable income (soon, fucking hell let it be soon) I’m going to click the “Donate” button at Coyote Crossing and remuneration shall be yours.
Wow, I apologize for that fucking incoherent mess of a first sentence up there. I don’t even know what I was trying to say.
Anteprepro:
Don’t worry, I followed it. Is it weird some part of me still thinks one of these slimeballs will have a convincing argument at some point? I really don’t want to spend my life reading every single argument every single believer makes, and am condensing them down to categories to save time, but ugh…
Is it just that the internet exposes more idiocy, or are there more idiots than there used to be? I’m scared to share a planet with these loons; every day feels more and more like I’ve wandered into a trap.
Also, wow, “God as Game Designer?” Well we’d better hope Yahweh never talks to the sick son of a bitch who programmed Demonophobia…though according to almost all believers, Yahweh outdoes said sick fuck by, well, infinity.
@Azuma Hazuki
I wrote a super cool* essay in high school called God in a Box, about DJing (which I thought was super awesome), and how a good DJ had to be omniscient, omnipresent, and amazing to control the dancing hordes. And a good DJ could be those things. And you could make people dance. And dance, and dance. Like a God.
*I totes thought it was a super cool essay. Haven’t seen it in a decade. I’m sure it is crap.
It’s not that weird to hold for the possibility. But don’t push yourself to hunt down these arguments. The good arguments for religions should rise to the top. They should be readily available in the religious meme pool. If they really justify religious belief and aren’t just post-hoc rationalizations, they should be arguments that most religious believers can articulate and are familiar with, even if only a crude, simplified manner. So, that means that truly novel arguments are probably just making shit up. The only truly acceptable, good argument one might not be aware of is may be the best phrasing of an old argument. The perfect polish on it. Quite frankly, all of those ancient turds have been polished quite enough and still lack luster. Hold out for the possibility, but just remind yourself that you shouldn’t have to hunt the good shit down, and given that you have probably covered a wide swath of apologia already, the probability of a good, killer, argument for god or religion lying out there is slim. Especially considering that the religious would have incentive to find this argument first and propagate it fast, far and wide.
(Please note: I say all of this, and yet I still can’t help myself from hunting down these legendary Good Arguments every so often. I know that we have well passed the threshold of reasonable doubt, and yet I still can’t help but give the benefit of doubt in a moment or two of weakness.)
Also, yes, seriously, God as a game designer.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of the novel arguments are inept metaphors, baldly asserted to be “how it really works”, insofar as that is convenient.
Those last few paragraphs of his are horrifying in their implications, because he also believes “Oh, and when you lose your last life, instead of being deleted off the server, you respawn with infinite health but in a lava lake. And the designer did this on purpose.”
It also shows how pathetic this guy is, though. Now I mostly feel sorry for him. Not so sorry that I wouldn’t kick his legs out from under him near a mud puddle of course.
I hate to Godwin, but Hitler was a sad little sack, too.
Ace of Sevens@82:
Yeah, I know it’s not a random sample, but in the absence of any other information than the voting turnout and the split, all you can go on is the statistical test for confidence intervals for a proportion. If you want to claim that there was some other factor involved, e.g. that racists turned out in droves for the vote, then you’d better be able to provide some evidence other than “I’d like to think that every single non-voting member was against him”.
Dr Cheeselove @ 47–
The person you’re remembering was called Vox Populi. I have no idea if they are the same person, but he used to spam the Livejournal atheist groups HARD, including having several alt accounts and running a mockery page, similar to the Slymepit. It took us about a year to gather enough evidence to finally get him banned. Good times. :/
God as game designer? not bad, really.
God as DM?
God as Hoyle?
God as Abner Doubleday? (I like that one)
Vox Day’s father is in prison for income tax evasion and also a plot to kill a federal judge.
These are just routine, garden variety sociopaths.
I have been alerted to a new tumblr highlighting the SFF writers whose work Theodore Beale has informed his “Dread Ilk” they can safely ignore: http://theodoresezdonotreadthese.tumblr.com/
Cyranothe2nd @98,
I’m convinced it’s the same person: http://atheist-fail.livejournal.com/profile
After reading the links about Beale posted here, especially the rational wiki one, there are so many coincidences. Both of them are obsessed with:
– how atheists are irrational
– using words like “twit”
– handles involving the word “vox”
– how materialism is the source of all evil
– really weird/bad arguments against various scientific theories
I remember watching some of the forums he trolled and getting the feeling that he could be a sociopath (not that you can diagnose people on the internet). But there was definitely something scary about how he could manipulate other people into believing the most absurd things and then turn them into his army of trolls.
@Daz
You mean the codes of conduct that part of “Western” civilization only adopted kicking and screaming after centuries of struggle by a good chunk of their own population plus the descendants of people they wronged?
rachelswirsky
Those people have only shown they’re willing to elect a monstrously racist asshat just to spite John Scalzi. Is that supposed to be encouraging?
On behalf of the between 50% and 75% of my ancestors who were white and the 50% who were male, I am insulted by the implication that they were like Beale. A society of Beales would degenerate into Lord of the Flies like insanity extremely rapidly. And starve.
Beale doesn’t know much history, does he? It wasn’t white men who invented algebra and the concept of zero, built the pyramids, built the railroads of the US west, developed most of the interesting bits of US culture, revealed the working of cell cytosol, discovered radium and polnium, and saved the US from a second great depression. Just to mention a few things that come to my mind without any internet searching. Plus Jeminins is a much better writer than he is. She is obviously more competent then he is in their field.
Dang. Beale’s statement was supposed to be in comic sans. Did something wrong apparently…
1: My (scare-quoted, you may note) use of the phrase “Western codes of civilised conduct” was a direct quote from VD’s own post, as linked in the edit at the end of the OP, here.
2: I specifically referred to the various civil rights movements which forced the change, and which VD seems to ignore when referencing said codes of conduct—the movements which did the struggling you refer to.
I get from your sarcastic tone that you feel I somehow glossed over or failed to note these facts.
The Do Not Read These tumblr is fantastic. And not by Mr. Beale, which was not apparent in tigtog’s mention at #101. (It’s early, haven’t had coffee yet.)
Also, Beale makes Orson Scott Card seem like a fusion of William Shakespeare, Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, Ursula LeGuin, and Octavia Butler. He would get some sort of prize for that.
I blame my Head Cold Of Doom for my earlier failure to make it clear that the Do Not Read These tumblr is a work of mockery directed at Theodore Beale in support of the writers whose work he has denigrated. Apologies.
You put a smile on my face! I’m just faintly, a tiny bit sad that I can’t rhyme “dipshit” with “atrocious”.
Well, as I said, levels of information vary. Some of have shown that. Others have shown that they’re willing to elect an unknown quantity in order to spite Scalzi (and those who have worked with him in order to enact the goals that characterize his administration).
I think most people voting on low information to spite would assume that “unknown quantity” only very rarely — so rarely as not to factor — will turn out to be someone who opposes universal suffrage. (I wonder to what extent, I and others underestimate the number of people who share that view, but that’s ancillary.)
All that aside, as I said before, while the 10% statistic may not justify every claim that’s been made, it’s still useful for examining how power works and is used and into what percentage of people one can assume will assent to anything.
Narcissistic racist sexist homophobic dipshit
What’s the word I’m looking for? “Atrocious”? Yes that fits it.
…
Creationist xians, by the way, can not distance themselves from Vox Day. Why? One of the writers for Creation Ministries International has written a long, bigoted screed against atheists where he uses Beale’s work quite a lot to support his case (read: ad-homs against us.
A truly sickening read, and you’ll see that Mariano relies on Vox a fair amount.
Voxy is now screaming OPPRESHUN because the Science Fiction Writers of America are calling him on his bullshit.
Short version. Waah, Waah, Waah. They aren’t giving me a free soapbox therefore they are silencing my dissent.
What a total tool!
@ 20. Ing:Intellectual Terrorist “Starting Tonight, People will Whine”
Hey, don’t misjudge SF please Ing, a lot of good & non-libertarian SF exists that some people (eg. Trekkies) base their lives on as well.
An awful lot – probably the majority of SF writers aren’t libertarians
Isaac Asimov was a notable humanist and liberal, Carl Sagan wrote good SF, Iain Banks, well we’ve seen the quotes from him on the currently latest thread today and you have those like Andre Norton*, Ursula Le Guin**, Anne McCaffrey*** and so on.
I love SF and read a wide range of it and whilst don’t think its necessarily a good idea to base your life in the here and now on SF set in future utopias; I do think SF enriches life and provides some interesting and definitely isn’t all libertarian although you get libertarians writing Sf just as you get liberals and even communists doing so.
* I’d highly recommend one of her novels which started with a struggling mother cat and moved onto struggling humans and a kind bear-like (?) alien race. Can’t recall the title or find it on my bookshelves though I thought I had a copy – just spent ages looking – but a childhood fave of mine.
** Recommend The Left Hand of Darkness very highly.
*** Same for many of her novels esp. the Crystal Singers ones.
Keep in mind I’m trying to say this in a nice tone as inflection doesn’t translate into print well.
1) I don’t think you’ve read what I write as 90% is genre media references
2) It was a crack on Libertarianism and it’s ties to Objectivism and Atlas Shrugged
3) As much as I like sci-fi, looking into the broader scope of it has shown me that any positive reputation as a genre it has is largely undeserved.
Found it on my bookshelf finally – Iron Cage Roc / Penguin books, 1974. Loved that novel as a kid and read and re-read that one many times.
@ 115. Ing :
True and thankyou for that.
1) Okay, I, well, I don’t quite understand what you are meaning in that sentence right now I’m afraid. I’ll think about that and sleep on it. I sometimes take a while to catch on.
2) Fair enough. I haven’t read those books and from what I gather I’m not overly keen to do so. (My books to read list is currently a lot longer than Id like to admit.) I am not a libertarian and no fan of Ayn Rand.* The only really libertarian SF writer that springs to my mind is Heinlein and while I enjoy may of his books I don’t always agree with what he has to say esp. his political philosophy.
3) Well, I absolutely love SF. I’ve always been an absolute bookworm and its a field I adore. So, well, let’s just say I strongly disagree with your conclusion there based on my personal experiences. I respect that you have a different perspective band experiences to mine. SF is, to me, about possibilities and thinking of what might be and a lot else as well. I’m not sure I can do the whole field justice or defend it especially given how I feel right now but I do suggest you reconsider based on the fact that really, SF is a whole diverse genre which is inclusive of every position on the political spectrum and which is certainly not, in my view anyhow, limited to the works of Rand and other libertarian authors. Your experience might be that those writers are a majority -but in my experience that’s not the case.
* On checking the spelling of Ayn Rand I found there’s another Anne Rand :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rand
who was a member of the US Democratic party and a supporter of Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Presidential bid and who sponsored a bill to make marijuana legal for patients with HIV-AIDS in 1995. Curious co-incidence and another new item learnt today.
Tpyos corrections (sigh, sorry folks) :
Found that Andre Norton novel on my bookshelf finally – ‘Iron Cage’ Roc / Penguin books, 1974.
The only really libertarian SF writer that springs to my mind is Heinlein and while I enjoy many of his books I do NOT always agree with what he has to say esp. his political philosophy.
I respect that you have a different perspective and experiences to mine.
Plus probably more I’ve missed. Must get some sleep soonest now.
Oh and on the topic here – I hardly need say that I agree with the opening post and that Theodore Beale / Vox Dei is a complete scumbag who deserves to be kicked out of, well everything, need I?
Also John Ringo, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Poul Anderson, Dan Simmons, and David Brin, and that’s just looking at my personal bookshelf. Then there’s L Neil Smith, who writes libertarian screeds thinly disguised as SF, F. Paul Wilson likewise although he’s better at it and mostly writes horror novels these days because there’s more money in it, Terry Goodkind, who tried to do The Fountainhead as fantasy instead of SF, and a whole bunch more of it besides. There’s loads more too whose names aren’t popping up in my mind right now; there’s a huge, huge vein of libertarianism in the SF community generally.
What a complete shithead. I’ve seen my share of shitheads, bit this Beale is up there near the top of the class.
mickll: If that bit of wankery from Beale is any indication, he is now The Most Oppressed Ubermensch On Earth, Ever.
Good. He just looks more egomaniacal and pathetic that way.
I cannot see how this is in any way encouraging or even defensible, as Rachel Swirsky valiantly attempts to do, especially when you read the “logic” underlying such a notion, as laid out by one William Barton in the SFWA forums:
The stupid — as the saying goes — it burns.