Gossip of the Day
A yahoo who does not give his name but calls himself Vunderguy is asking a Houyhnhnm named John C Wright what is my emotional reaction to a man who calls himself Vox Day but whose real name is Theodore Beale.
Speaking of flights and fancy, what’s your take on your publisher, Vox Day?
Despite the bouncing gaiety of the question, I answered it soberly, saying this: I think he has too high an opinion of me and my work, frankly. This is based on private communications with him, where he grants me more praise than I think just. While it is right and proper, as a matter of professional courtesy, for an editor to flatter a writer he publishes, I am afraid in this case he overestimates my talent, albeit I am grateful for the flattery, because I am quite vain.
Vunderguy answers with this indirect comment:
While that insight is a bit humanizing of him, I meant in regards to his more… ‘fringe’ views.
I was not aware that Mr. Beale needed ‘humanizing’ whatever that word means. As a Houyhnhnm, the process sounds painful and dangerous and much to be avoided.
Growing mildly impatient, in my unemotional way, I remarked: “Fringe views? Is this a guessing game where you act like a coy schoolgirl and do not say what you mean, while I act like a man and speak in complete sentences?” And I mentioned some of Mr Beale’s unusual views, for example on drug legalization and other libertarian issues, which are not mainstream.
After that, Mr. Guy (as I shall hereafter call the anonymous accuser) finally agreed to speak plainly and ask his question, or, rather, his accusation disguised as a question.
I say ‘his’ because in English, when the sex of the antecedent is unknown or undetermined, this is the proper pronoun. The delicate indirectness with which Mr. Guy asks his questions, however, is more typically seen in women, or was, back in the day when women practiced feminine delicacy.
Since it is an accusation and not a question, in a properly lawyerly fashion, let me answer point by point:
Alright, I’ll just up and say it then.
I raise a supercilious eyebrow at the introductory sentence, as if the accuser has to brace himself before he tells his true opinion. I am, like all Houyhnhnms, unsympathetic to the concept of having to brace yourself before telling the truth.
To me, it is not only unexceptional, a default setting, so to speak. The opposite, which is to gossip, to backbite, to say the thing which is not is the unusual thing, nay, the unheard-of thing.
However, to be clear, this introductory preamble is neither here nor there. It is not an apology for the previous hemming and hawing, nor an explanation of it, merely a statement that henceforth, the language will be direct.
He seems to me to be something of a white supremacist, even though he’s about as white as I am, or at least, draw those kinds of people towards him.
This language, unfortunately, is less than direct.
The sentence is the core accusation. It is in two parts (1) It seems to Mr. Guy, for reasons not stated, the Mr. Beale is something of a white supremacist.
I take this to mean that the counsel for the prosecution does not in fact accuse Mr. Beale of being a white supremacist, merely something akin, nearby, approximate. However, the language is ambiguous, since the phrase ‘something like’ might also mean that Mr. Beale is very much a white supremacist, here meant as a wry understatement.
The second part of the accusation is (2) it seems to Mr. Guy, for reasons not stated, that Mr. Beale draws those kinds of people to him. Again, the statement is mildly ambiguous, albeit from context, I conclude the proper construction is that Mr Beale finds that white supremacists are drawn to him, not that people as white as Mr. Guy are drawn to him.
Since the statement is in the alternative, the two options are that (1) it seems for reasons not stated to some random stranger on the internet that Mr. Beale is not a white supremacist, but is something akin or approximate to being a white supremacist (2) or, in the alternate, it seems for reasons not stated to some random stranger on the internet that Mr. Beale is not a white supremacist, nor something akin or approximate to being a white supremacist, but that people who are of the ‘kind’ or ‘species’ of white supremacist are drawn to him.
At this point, I can begin to answer Mr. Guy’s question: my ‘take’ — by which I assume he is asking for an emotional reaction — to this accusation is that the accusation should be reformulated to be more specific.
In its present form, it is not actionable, since it neither states the evidences to support the accusation, nor gives testimony to support the expertise of the accuser to come to his conclusion. Whether he meant this merely as an ornament of language or not, the fact is that Mr. Guy did not say Mr. Beale ‘is’ a white supremacist, nor that I nor any man should conclude Mr. Beale is a white supremacist, but only that Mr. Beale ‘seems’ or ‘appears’ to be a white supremacist.
Now, again, I draw the reader’s attention to the feminine delicacy and indirectness of the approach. When women gossip, it is customary, for the sake of the social harmony of which the gentle distaff sex are the traditional custodians, never directly to accuse nor challenge another woman’s opinion. The tradition is for one women to make a statement of subjective opinion, and fish to see of the other women in the social circle share the opinion. This is the primary objective of gossip: to establish a feminine form of dominance by aligning oneself with the consensus, and by forming an unformed consensus.
Rarely is there anything like an argument or a trial, where one party states an accusation as an accusation, another party issues defiance and mounts a defense, and there is one winner and one loser. The shame of having a winner and a loser is a price womenfolk traditionally find unendurable to shoulder, as it cuts against future mutual amity and harmony within the social circle.
Lest any feminist take umbrage that I utter a truth about her sex, allow me to state that I am not advocating for or against this tradition, I merely note it.
I do not, however, follow it, since I am not only a man, but I am one who advocates that, in order to please our womenfolk (who become understandably nervous when they see their men acting unmanfully) we men should conduct ourselves in a masculine fashion, that is, to be as honest and direct as courtesy permits, and unconcerned with gossip and emotion.
Now, I like Vox in a lot of ways. He’s even more non-PC than Matt Stone, Trey Parker’s, Larry Correra’s, and Andrew Klavan’s gay managa-whatever-the-frenchy-word-for-four-is’ love child and the ways he can get under the enemy’s skin is admirable…
This is not accusation, but gossip. Mr. Guy is telling me his emotional reaction to Mr. Beale, which is information I did not solicit and which (since I have no evidence one way or the other on which to base an assessment of the competence of Mr. Guy, random stranger on the internet, to make a sound judgment concerning Mr. Beale’s character) I cannot possibly have any reason to heed, neither to agree nor disagree.
So the information about the random internet stranger’s emotional reactions to Mr. Beale not only unwelcome and uninformative, it is also useless.
As far as my own reaction, I give less than a tinker’s damn about whether Mr. Guy likes Mr. Beale or not, and I feel the same reaction of disquiet as if an unkempt, unwashed and overweight stranger on the street walked up and put his hand in my trouser pocket. While it does me no harm in either case, the familiarity is one I resent.
I have no idea who Matt Stone nor Trey Parker are. My memory for names is almost comically poor, however, so I apologize to them if these are men from the science fiction field I have worked with, or writers I have read.
I am a great admirer of Andrew Klavan. The reference to gay managa [sic] love child seems to be an attempt at a smirking jest, but, if so it, fails to amuse, or make sense, and so is left to stumble over itself and pratfall into an incoherent stream of words.
I am unclear as to the point of comparing Mr. Beale to these men. It is of no interest whatsoever to me.
.. but he [Mr. Beale, not Andrew Klavan] seems to have trouble separating the culture a people group has from the people group themselves and seems to equate the genetics of that people group too closely with the behaviors of that people group… [ellipsis in the original] even though, as an admitted minority, he’s one pretty smart cookie.
The sentence is incoherent. I routinely give alms to the dazed and drunk men I find wandering the streets of the place near where I work, out of a Christian sense of duty, obeying a commandment I confess I do not understand. Mr. Guy in this sentence has fallen into the habitual wording of such street people.
Mr. Guy perhaps is saying that Mr. Beale conflates the culture of a ‘people group’ (he means a race) with the ‘people group’ itself. However, what the distinction is between a culture, that is, the behavior of a race, and the race itself, is not here said. Since the races can interbreed, the culture is, of course, the only basis on which to judge the group, that is, it is what defines membership, for, if not, Sephardic Jews would be a different race from Ashkenazim, which is absurd, therefore QED.
On the other hand, Mr Guy is perhaps saying that the genetics of a group should be distinguished from the behaviors of the group. I admit I am baffled. If Mr. Guy is asking me to rule on Mr. Beale’s theory of the age old controversy of nature versus nurture, Mr. Guy would have to recite or at least summarize the points for and against the argument.
For those who are curious, my own position on the nature versus nurture controversy is clear: I am a Catholic. Catholics believe men and angels have free will, and that we freely chose either life or death, obedience or rebellion, reason or madness, good or evil. As sons of Adam, we have an innate or original inclination toward sin which baptism does not cure in and of itself. Catholic anathematize and regard as heretics, those, such as Calvin, who deny the freedom of the will. Whether you deny free will because you blame the stars and planets of your birth for your fate, or because you blame the crooked spiral molecules of your genetics for you fate, makes no difference. We also anathematize Pelagians, who deny original sin.
I have, myself, spent many tedious hours arguing with a dyed-in-the-wool Leftist who attempted to put across the incoherent argument that all human thought is conditioned by, nay, caused by and only by, the molecular conditions of the brain, in turn based on genetics, in turn based on atomic forces in motion. Marx thought human thought was conditioned by the physical circumstance of the means of production in an economy. It is not only commonplace for Leftists to assert that human thought is conditioned by nature, it is the dominant theory.
What I find distasteful in the extreme is that Mr. Guy is conflating being a white supremacist with being someone who thinks behaviors are conditioned more by nature than by nurture. That is simply grotesque.
I should say, with all due caution, that I am not sure if that is what Mr. Guy meant. His sentence was unclear, and I am not sufficiently curious to ask for a clarification.
I mean, you’d have to be to be able to be such an isolationist that you give up on America and move to Italy with a family to support… [ellipsis in the original] even though that’s even closer to where the first bangs of destruction will begin, but whatever.
I have no idea to what this sentence refers. The word isolationist means someone who wishes the United States not to become involved in European Wars. Isolationism does not mean moving to Italy. Whose family is meant is unclear, whether Mr. Beale’s family or my family or any family in general. What bangs of destruction are being referred to here are unclear. Mr. Beale lives overseas, but I assumed it was in the country where he is incorporated. It is not a matter about which I have any curiosity.
Naturally, I have no opinion on the advisability of moving overseas, since various causes might impel an emigrant. I am really, really puzzled, bordering on disgust, that a random stranger on the internet would write to me to ask about my publisher’s wisdom in moving to Italy. There is no reason for me to have an opinion on that matter, and even if I did, it is an effrontery to solicit that opinion from me.
Usually, when I speak with drunks on the street, I can get them to promise me to stop drinking if I give them money for food, and I can tell them about Christ’s love for all mankind. But I do not listen to them ramble on about unrelated nonsense in disconnected sentences.
To top it all off, like I said, a lot of the people that tend to comment on his site are nowhere near as awesome as the people that comment on yours, and by that I mean that a lot of the commenters on his site seem to be what Alfonzo Rachel would call, ‘Noe-Confederate Libertarians’ and/or the kind of people who believe we had no good reasons to intervene in Vietnam, Iraq, and probably WW II (I.E., the kind of absolutist pacifists that find no use for Just War Theory).
I am not sure to what the phrase, to top it all off refers. Usually this phrase means that the writer had made a list of points or accusations, and that a particularly damning accusation or clear point follows. Instead is a disjointed eructation of material unrelated to Mr. Beale.
Unless we are to hold a man responsible for the views of random strangers leaving comments on his internet weblog, this is not only not a damning accusation, it is not an accusation at all. It seems neither to be related to the previous accusations of isolationism, moving to Italy, believing that nature rather than nurture is predominant in determining character, nor being or attracting white supremacists, nor seeming to.
Furthermore, Vox supported Ted Cruz’s plan to get a bill passed that would enable congress to strip the citizenship of people who went to go join ISIS…
I am an attorney, and so I am unduly impatient when know-nothing blithermouths attempt to explain legal matters to me where I am an expert and they are an ignoramuses. I would at least like the courtesy done me that the blithermouth read up on the issue before holding forth his ignorant layman’s blither.
As a matter of fact, striping the legal protections of citizenship of men who serve in the enemy military service in time of war is routine, and not a matter of controversy at all.
See, for one example of many, the Nationality Act of 1940, Public Law 76-853, 54 Stat. 1137, holds that service in a foreign military when coupled with citizenship (and this is not even a military of an enemy nation at war) is sufficient grounds for citizenship to be revoked. See also Ex Parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942) were normal constitutional rights to trial and so on were denied enemy combatants despite their being US citizens.
The upshot of this is that revoking citizenship for enemy combatants is already the law of the land and always has been, in this and every nation covered by Common or Civic Law.
It would be controversial to oppose such a plan, or, rather, utterly unheard-of, or, rather, totally and utterly bat-guano insane. No prince and no parliament in the history of the world has ever extending citizenship rights to soldiers of an enemy in time of war. So, like moving to Italy, this is not a controversial nor fringe opinion.
Sen. Cruz’s proposal — if I understand it — was not legislation to strip citizenship from men who join the military of the Islamic State – as I said above, that is routine, and requires no additional actions from Congress – the legislation was merely to beef up security border processes to prevent such men from sneaking back into the country.
However, Mr. Guy was not asking me my opinion of the laws concerning loss of citizenship for those swearing fealty to a foreign sovereign in time of war; he was asking my opinion about Mr. Beale’s alleged support for Mr. Cruz’s proposal. Since I have not read what Mr. Cruz specifically said, nor what Mr. Beale said, I have no opinion, and, frankly, not much curiosity.
Allow me a moment to put this in perspective.
My editor at Tor Books is the accomplished Mr. David G. Hartwell, whose name is well known and well respected in science fiction field. I do not know his opinion of the senator from Texas, nor, more to the point, of the senator from New York where Mr. Hartwell lives. It has no bearing on our professional relationship and it would be odd indeed if it did. Mr. Hartwell has been ably assisted by Mr. Palmieri, whose name I hope will become more well known and respected in the future.
Again, Mr. Glen Yeffeth of Benbella Books edited and published a number of my essays in his ‘Smart Pop’ series. I have also worked with editors such as Gordon van Gelder, George R.R. Martin, David Brin, Gardner Dozois, whose names are giants in the field, as well as with less well known editors such as Mike McPhail, Andy W. Robertson, and the brilliant Jonathan Strahan.
It has also been my great pleasure to work with Mike Allen, whose anthology, CLOCKWORK PHOENIX is a work of unparalleled innovation and eerie brilliance.
No one has ever asked me my opinion of the political opinions of any of these men, nor, for that matter, has anyone ever asked me about their offtrack betting habits, drinking habits, religious faith, taste in neckties, nor their terpsichorean acuity on the dancefloor.
Anyone who believes David Brin and I share the same taste in neckties or political loyalties is unfamiliar with the two of us. He and I have worked together in the past without friction or undue intrusion of nonprofessional matters in our shared work, and I would happily work together with him in the future if asked, since he is a man I respect and honor.
You see, I am not a Leftist, therefore to me politics are a secondary matter, a matter that concerns only my opinions about law and public policy. It is not my religion and not my whole life. I am willing and able to work with heretics and heathens without inquiring into their religious faith, because I can tolerate to dwell in the world without being of the world. That is the only rational and professional attitude to have for anyone living in an extended society, that is to say, anyone not living in an isolationist and tribal society, or one with an established national church where dissent is illegal.
Mr. Guy’s question is based on the opposite premise, that one should be tribal and isolationist and adhere to an established national church, in this case, the church of Political Correctness (his alleged amusement at being not politically correct notwithstanding). Mr. Guy’s question, in sum, is inviting me to be irrational and unprofessional by departing my Church and joining his cult. I respectfully decline.
Where were we?
Ah, yes. The bill of accusations against Mr. Beale. Mr. Guy gets distracted of his main purpose, and goes rambling on:
… even though anyone with any knowledge of history, like he’s SUPPOSED TO BE, would know that such a bill would just erode our republic faster like the laws put in place by ‘that RINO Neo-Con George W’ that every self-professed Libertarian likes to bash, and enhanced by Obama.
At this point, it is safe to conclude that Mr. Guy, or whatever his real name is, is a raving lunatic who has supped too deeply from the wine of politics.
However, he did not solicit my opinion on his lunatic theory that failing to strip the citizenship from fighting-men serving in enemy military service in time of war will erode the republic more swiftly than neocon (?) George W. Bush (A neocon is a neoconservative, that is, a leftist who crossed the aisle to be a supporter of a strong military and foreign wars who previously had opposed such things), so I will pass by this spasm of lunacy without further comment.
It is unrelated to our purpose, except that I will say I have not heard anything from Mr. Beale as controversial as this, except, perhaps, for Mr. Beale’s outrageous claim to be both a libertarian and an opponent of free trade, or the absurdity of referring to the South as occupied and conquered territory. As a Virginian, not only do I resent the claim, I’ll point out the number of presidents who had been governors of Southern states is too high for the occupation by you Yankees to continue successfully.
Furthermore, Vox supports #NotYourShield for the whole gamergate thing, and that hashtag is pretty darned racist, and I mean LEGITIMATELY racist, and not in the faux-racism that Vox’s ‘Magic Negro’ statements about Obama and Ben Carson were.
Ah, here we have an open accusation that a hashtag is racist. I myself am not sure what a hashtag is, or how it can be used, or what it is for. How it can be racist, much less pretty darned racist, is not clear from the rambling mess of words. However, as an unsupported statement, it can be dismissed.
I am not familiar with Gamergate except that I know that the accusations leveled against the Gamergaters are the routine falsehoods used by Leftists to shout down opposition, in this case, opposition to a legitimate request to eschew corruption in journalism.
You see, I don’t know gamers, but I know journalists, since I am one.
So there is no doubt in my mind, not even the smallest scintilla, that the Anti-GG folk are liars and vermin and sucklings of asps and scorpions, who fill their mouths with poison.
I am actually offended that anyone thinks me naive enough to fall for so transparent a deception. Next time, try to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge. I will be more willing to hear your sales pitch on that topic than on this. Next time, wipe the chocolate off your mouth before telling Mommy that a monster climbed up on the kitchen counter and broke the cookie jar.
Let me explain the reason for my unwillingness to heed accusations of racism.
I was once called a racist for making the statement that Leftists, when debating a scientific issue, such as the alleged differences in brain structure between men and women, or the alleged difference in median IQ between races, rather than debate the issue scientifically, merely call their opponents racists. For saying that Leftist call people racists rather than arguing the science of a scientific study, a Leftist called me a racist.
(For those of you who care, I do not think ‘race’ can be measured nor determined scientifically, nor do I think I.Q. tests measure anything except how well one does on I.Q. tests. I do not believe that general intelligence exists, only intelligence as it applies to specific tasks, which is how I can be a genius when it comes to linguistic skills such as reasoning, but find myself unable to use a payphone or dress myself in the morning without my wife’s help.)
My wife was called a racist by a Leftist for saying that men should be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. She is a Jewess.
My best friend was called a racist by a Leftist for protesting high taxes. He married a Japanese woman.
My roommate was called racist by a Leftist for opposing big government. He is a Negro.
Everyone I know, every single Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve, has either been called racist or is a member of a group, such as the Tea Party, the male sex, the Christian faith, or the Science Fiction profession, that has been called racist.
The boy has cried wolf too often, and cried it against me and my beloved family and beloved friends, whom honor demands I protect, and cried it with such malice, and with such contemptuous disregard for logic, fairness, or truth as to put the little boys who cry such cries forever beyond the pale of civil discourse. Such wolf-cries are intolerable to me, and leave me wishing for the wolf to tear the boy to bits, that the sheepfold no longer be disturbed by his lies.
Since that day, and a thousand days like it, as a matter of policy, I assume anyone who accuses another of racism is like a witchhunter who accuses an innocent old beggar woman of being a witch.
The witchhunters make the accusation so that the mob will feel a sense of panic, of malice, of sadism, of satisfaction, of deflected blame for their own sins, and of relief not to be accused.
The accusation removes all responsibility in the breast of each man in the mob for his own sins and it tightens the invisible fetters of conformity that give the mob its unity of malevolence.
The joy of attacking the weak is central to the process.
Hence the witchhunter never addresses the accused directly, never confronts the witch, but instead nudges his neighbor, nods at the old beggar woman, sees she is unarmed, and mutters the disjointed accusations, such as if she owns a black cat or once walked near a sick cow.
The real meaning, of course, of accusing the old woman is that it relieve one of the onerous duty of charity, of giving her alms.
Since most witchhunters also perform black masses and pray to the devil, I am grossly skeptical of their finger-pointing. I assume as a matter of policy that the man who accuses his neighbor of racism is himself the racist whose ghostly image he sees in all other faces.
So far, I have never had any reason nor seen any evidence to question my policy. So far, no one I have heard accusing another man of racism has been honest.
Not one. Never. No exceptions.
None of them have even been clever enough to fake up evidence or to present a convincing nor circumstantial, not even a prima face, case. No one has bothered. Not one.
Like the witchhunter, the racisthunter always offers his accusation is if it were the evidence, the trial, the condemnation, and the execution all at once. So here.
He [Mr Beale] also thinks that the west started the current crises in the Middle-East, even though he admits that it was Muslim aggression that started started the crises on a more macrocosmic scale in the middle-ages, which strikes me as double-think despite any empty rhetoric of, ‘War is Peace,’ that might be hurled at me.
I am unable to parse this sentence. Many Libertarians of my acquaintance routinely accuse the United States of starting or aggravating overseas conflicts. The word macrocosmic here is misplaced, unless it is meant as a comic exaggeration.
While there may be a paradox involving in blaming the United States for her adventures in the Middle East while acknowledging the current conflicts to have Medieval roots for which only the Muslims take the blame, there is not necessarily a paradox, depending on what line of reasoning leads to the two conclusions. I do not see a conflict in logic if someone blames America for contributing to situation springing from remote historical causes: no historical event has one and one cause only to the exclusion of all others.
In any case, I have no reason to believe this is Mr. Beale’s opinion being here presented accurately and fully. No evidence, no quote, no link is offered in support.
The final sentence contradicts what comes before, perhaps due to a typo. I assume Mr. Guy does not mean blaming both Modern America and Medieval Muslims for the current conflict is doublethink despite empty rhetoric of war is peace; he means it is doublethink because it the empty rhetoric of war is peace. However, it is not my place to clarify his comments, or wipe the drool from his chin, and I am not sufficiently curious to solicit clarification.
In any case, I have no opinion about a matter where no evidence is presented nor even adumbrated. I did not read the allegedly paradoxical comment by Mr. Beale about the cause of the Middle Eastern wars. Hence I cannot venture even a speculation on whether the paradox was real or semantic, or even if it existed in the first place. If the paradox did exist, the proper response would be politely to ask Mr Beale to distinguish the cases, not come gossiping to me.
If Mr. Beale has closely studied history, I will pay more heed to his conclusions, whatever they are, than to a man who has not studied, or who, as Leftists and Libertarians routinely do, bases conclusions on abstract cogitations from first principles: but this is true of any man I read, no matter my professional relationship with him. So that cannot be what Mr. Guy is asked me about.
And there, abruptly, the bill of accusations stumbles to a jarring end.
So, that is it? The man is both a bloodthirsty racist like Hitler, and he supported Ted Cruz, Gamergate, and he made an error in formal logic by assigning multiple causes to recent wars and tumults in the Middle East?
Aha. I understand Mao both slaughtered more innocent human beings by a factor of ten than any man in history, and also he cheated on his wife. While both things are errors, one seems to outweigh the other.
The lack of proportionality between the accusations gives the whole list the unreal air of a witch-hunter listing every possible charge, from the felonious to the trivial. When one is charged with clearing the kingdom of witches, such zeal is perhaps commendable. But what is the reason for the zeal here?
It is the infatuation of hatred.
When one is in love, every virtue, real or imagined, that can be attributed to the beloved, great and small, from her faithfulness to her remembering to pack a napkin adorned with a pencil sketch of a heart pierced by an arrow in your lunchpail, is a cause for praising and glorifying her, much to the skeptical amusement of your lunchroom mates. Since they are not infatuated with her, seeing you dance around the cafeteria tables kissing the scrap of napkin is a matter of quaint amusement for them.
Likewise, when one is consumed with hate, every vice, real or imagined, that can be attributed to the object of one’s obsessive contumely, great or small, is cause for dispraising and demeaning him. To those of us not infatuated, it is a matter of disgust to see you carrying on in such an unsightly fashion.
Civilized men are not amused to see you dancing around the cafeteria in the fury of Rumpelstiltskin, tearing your hair for spite, spitting at a well worn photograph of hoodoo doll of your foe, or stabbing it with your fork.
Let us close by commenting on the weightier accusation.
What Mr. Guy means by a ‘white supremacist’ is unclear, albeit, in political circles, this phrase as a specific meaning: it means someone who supports laws and customs and policies which grant members the Teutonic race, that is, German and English Protestants, special legal privileges or customary dignities denied to Irishmen, Spaniards, Italians and other Catholic or Orthodox races, Slavs, Greeks, Russians, Nestorians, Copts, and non-Europeans.
Since Mr. Guy offers not even the slightest scintilla of evidence to support the accusation that Mr. Beale is a white supremacist. Instead he offers that Mr. Beale is himself not Teutonic, or, rather, that he is about as white as Mr. Guy, which would seem to indicate that if Mr. Beale is a white supremacist, he comes by it honestly, since it is what we lawyer call a statement against interest.
Of course, without the Ahnenpass so beloved of the Leftists (it is a document ever in the forefront of their thoughts) of Mr Guy and Mr Beale open for my inspection, and without either a scientific or legal definition of the degrees of whiteness, I cannot assess which of the two is more white, nor why this would give Mr. Beale more authority to be a supremacist or less. If you do not know what an Ahnenpass is, dear reader, count yourself fortunate.
Mr Guy further says that Mr Beale, as an admitted minority is one pretty smart cookie. I assume this means Mr Beale is a member of a minority of some sort, and that either it is smart for him to admit it first before the truth comes out, or that it is a minority that is generally known for not being smart, and that Mr Beale is an exception. I am not aware of what minority Mr Beale claims to be, though I believe he once said his uncle was Mexican, which would make him Spanish, which would make him Caucasian, which are not the minority in Italy, but are in Japan. Whether or not Mr Guy is implying Mexicans are stupid I leave for the candid reader to determine. The matter does not interest me.
For those who are curious about my own opinion on race, I would say that the Jews are a superior race, both because of their native intelligence and because they were selected by God Almighty to be His chosen people, and to suffering the wrath and contumely of this world at the hands of the servants of the Prince of the Middle Air who, for now, rules here. I have seen the antisemitic comments of the Left (where most secular Jews, ironically if not suicidally align themselves) grow some a small fringe to a large current in the mainstream to be disquieting in the extreme, and I foresee nothing but horror and bloodshed in the offing.
After them, the Japanese self-assurance, imitative enthusiasm, artistic sensibility, and general intelligence seems to indicate that they are also a superior race, perhaps even the children of the Sun Goddess as they claim.
Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the many blessings, material and spiritual, poured out by the hand of the Providence have gushed abundantly onto the undeserving European peoples, included unparalleled advances in jurisprudence, mechanics, mathematics, music, architecture, art, the glorification of women and the equalization of the races, which are not merely impossible, but unimaginable, outside Christendom.
Those benefits diminish or vanish in areas, once Christian, such as the Middle East, Asia Minor, and Northern Africa, conquered by the heretic Saracens. I hold this to be due to religion, however, not to race.
Mr. Beale on many occasions has publicly advocating preserving these benefits and blessings we in the West have inherited from Christendom, albeit he does not use that term, as he prefers limp and fuzzy modern language to the force and clarity of antique words. To denounce this loyalty to the ashes of one’s fathers and the altar’s of one’s gods as an advocacy toward white supremacy is risible.
In any case, Mr. Guy’s unsupported statement that Mr. Beale is a racist and a white supremacist, when he does not even define the term, carries no weight with me one way or the other, but provokes my deepest suspicion, revulsion, and antipathy.
As per my policy aforementioned, and for the reasons aforementioned, I shall hereafter assume that Mr. Vunderguy, whoever or whatever he is, is a witchhunter, that is, a racist. As such, his bigotry is unsightly and unwelcome, and I hope he never again befouls my comments box with his litter.
I must hasten to add, to those readers to whom my reaction seems harsh, is that my reaction is balanced and fair-minded, once we take into account two things
(1) My lifelong experience with such accusations, all of which turned out to be not only false, but glaringly hypocritical. Not just innocent people were being accused, but the most shining examples of innocence, and they were accused not merely recklessly, but maliciously, and by folks who were themselves racists.
(2) The utter unreality of the accusation, and the false pretense under which it is being offered. Mr. Guy is not curious about my relationships with my editors, or else he would have asked about the others. Anyone in the science fiction field should be provoked to curiosity as to what it was like to work with George R.R. Martin for example.
(It was a great pleasure. He is a perfect gentleman, a wise and skilled editor, and he allowed me to go over the word limit for my humble story. He jovially threatened to wrestle with me should I try to snatch it back from him. This is one of the more handsome compliments I have ever been paid, considering that Neil Gaiman and Robert Silverberg were also under this editorial direction at the time.)
So Mr. Vunderguy is not actually asking me anything, nor soliciting my opinion, he is using my blog as a forum and an excuse to vomit his unsupported, false, foul, and unconvincing slanders onto a man who is not here to defend himself, and pretending merely to be asking me an innocent question.
My answer is necessarily harsh and insulting, since to fail to condemn a man who abuses my hospitality under false pretenses is unfair to any man who respects my hospitality, and plays straight with me.
Men traditionally play straight with each other, or should. Women traditionally are not as straightforward, since their role is to attend to longterm social harmony.
Pajama Boys are not straightforward because they are weak-brained, craven and crooked, limp in their male members, and gormless. Their role is to unravel the social harmony, and so they must be upbraided in no uncertain terms whenever they poke their snouts from their ratholes.
I call the whole exercise unreal because, no one is actually soliciting my opinion on the alleged ideas of one of my several editors and publishers of my yarns about space heroes rescuing space princesses from space pirates concerning nuances of Congressmen from Texas nor American military deployments in Persia.
No one can solicit my opinion on these things because I have none, no more than I have opinions about square circles or circular squares. No one can have an opinion about a nonexistent topic. I do not police my editors or fellow science fiction writers for their ideological purity. Hence the set of the editors who fall under my political condemnation for thoughtcrimes is a null set.
When SFWA, the writer’s guild, under John Scalzi’s leadership, decided to adopt the role of ideological policeman, I resigned in disdain, unwilling to soil my white plume of honor by contagion with such loathsome company.
When I talk with my editors, we do not discuss each others’ ideology, politics, religion, or theories of war, genetics, or history.
Very rarely, when we professionals are discussing, for example, how much cleavage the metallic brassier of Space Princess Voluptua of Venus should reveal as she is seen tied to the mizzenmast of the space-rocket in the cover art of BUCCANEERS OF BETELGEUSE or as she is seen kneeling and clutching the leg of Space Captain Tomorrow as he poses in his torn space-shirt, blasters blazing in either hairy fist, on the cover of FREEBOOTERS OF FORNAX, does the topic of current congressional action regarding naturalization procedures and policy come up.
Indeed, the one and only time I can recall that any political consideration intruded into a professional discussion of this kind is when my editor asked me, in the year immediately following the 9/11 massacre by Muslims of innocent American citizens, not to portray the American military in an unflattering light in my novel MISTS OF EVERNESS, a request with which I was happy to accede.
That was not Theodore Beale, it was David G Hartwell, and even in that discussion, he did not venture, nor did I inquire, his opinion about the American Military: his concern, and rightly so, was that my writing should not alienate nor offend potential readers unwittingly, and ergo he and I discussed the readership’s opinions, not our own.
Professionals do not discuss these things, at least not in their professional capacity.
Upon occasion, I have exchanged mail with Mr. Beale in a more private and friendly capacity, since I find him to have a loyal spirit and an acute insight. But those discussions are private, and meant for friends, not random internet trolls and busybodies and gossips.
I will make no comment on accusations that are unsupported, except to dismiss them as slanders until proven otherwise.
But I will say that there are worse things than being a racist, since, absent a law and an army to support them, marginal crackpot opinions harm no man.
Gossip, however, is a vice condemned in sacred scripture, and the universal experience of mankind demonstrates how much harm a poisoned tongue can do, not just to the absent victim behind whose back the slanders are being whispered.
Gossip does both to him who hears the venom and to him who speaks it.
Gentlemen avoid both.
I should be offended that any man would think me to be so weak as to participate in such base and petty venture, but we live in an uncivil and uncivilized age, which is declining rapidly.