A blogger finds fault with my moral calculus equating paypigs who sell out their culture for a pot of message fic to Americans who aided and abetted communists.
“Stop giving money to people who hate you.”
Brian Niemeier has taken this to an extreme:
From now on, I will regard anyone buying a Marvel or DC comic or a ticket to a Disney movie as morally equivalent to an American who gave aid and comfort to known Communist spies during the Cold War. SJWs want me banished from society and killed. If you buy their products, you advance their goal.
Is Brian going to treat the people who buy his books on Amazon like Communist sympathizers too? Because this is what I saw on Amazon last night:
Just because Amazon isn’t as converged as Disney doesn’t mean that they’re not going to go down a similar path in the near future and screw over all of us. Clearly they’re already working on their part to destroy western civilization. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for all the right-leaning indie authors to pull their books off Amazon. That’s where the money is.
How do you stop giving money to people who hate you when everybody hates you?
It’s a sadly common scene in America these days: The addict lashes out at friends trying to cure him of the vice that’s destroying him. This clumsy effort to paint me as a hypocrite by drawing a false moral equivalence between proximate cooperation with Disney and remote cooperation with Amazon sounds more like the squealing of Disney paypigs wallowing in the muck, shivering for their next fix of poz slop.
That’s the problem with trying to deflect attention from the beam in your eye by pointing out the motes in others’.
But the accusations have been leveled, so I’ll dispense with the charges in turn.
1. Brian Niemeier has taken this to an extreme…
The accusation of extremism, a shopworn rhetorical jab of the Left. I could stop right here since my accuser is clearly proceeding in bad faith, but he’s given us an excellent teachable moment.
Communist infiltrators of yesteryear sought to converge American cultural institutions to destroy Western civilization. Anyone who financially supported them–say, a Hollywood studio chief who employed commie screenwriters–rendered proximate material cooperation to their diabolical project.
Disney–not just the writers; the whole studio–has been fully converged by cultural Marxists hellbent on destroying Western civilization. Paying them for their movies renders proximate material cooperation to their diabolical project.
These statements take nothing “to an extreme”. They point out a real moral equivalence. It’s not on me if being confronted with the true moral character of your entertainment choices triggers your amygdalae.
2. Is Brian going to treat the people who buy his books on Amazon like Communist sympathizers too?
No.
Again, I could stop right there. Anyone who’s paid any amount of attention to this blog knows my position on an author’s relationship to his readers.
But because this false moral equivalence is even stupider than dismissing a readily observable fact as “extreme”, I’ll lay this out for anyone who might be tempted to take this guy’s pearl-clutching seriously.
First, implying I’m any kind of Amazon sycophant is just dumb. I’ve never hesitated to call them out when they’ve messed up before, and I won’t hesitate to call them out in the future if they mess up again.
Speaking of which, the Amazon Stories ad above definitely qualifies. Bad Amazon! For shame.
With that shit test out of the way, the OP himself admits that a) Amazon is not fully converged and b) Amazon is where the money is. The point of getting into any business, publishing included, is to make a profit. There are always edge cases, but for 99.999% of authors Amazon is the only game in town.
But since they’re not fully converged–Nick Cole and Vox Day agree it’s mainly just some mid-level SJWs who’re easily bypassed–dealing with Amazon is at worst remote material cooperation with evil; not proximate cooperation like paying to see Soylo.
The OP does make a valid point. The situation has deteriorated to the stage where it’s impossible to conduct our daily lives without cooperating with evil in some small way. The Bible forewarned us this would happen.
How did it come to this? I’ve written about that, too. The founders of our institutions, largely conservatives by today’s standards, gave away the farm to the Left. I’d love to avoid dealing with Lefties altogether, but thanks to the Right’s incorrigible tendency to sell out, that’s not an option.
Western civilizationalist authors like Nick Cole, John C. Wright, and myself have to play the cards we’re dealt at the only available table, and right now Amazon runs that table. Luckily they run it pretty fair, so guys like us at least have a chance to win. Which we are. Bigly. We can keep winning at Amazon’s game, or we can cave to false moral equivalencies, fold, and go home. Which would you prefer, dear readers?
3. Just because Amazon isn’t as converged as Disney doesn’t mean that they’re not going to go down a similar path in the near future and screw over all of us.
This shit again. It’s just a political twist on the old zombie meme deployed by Stockholm syndrome-riddled legacy pub authors. “Amazon pays great royalties now, but they might not later, so you’d better stick with the Big Five publishers who pay eight percent!”
To crib from Stefan Molyneux, the atheist who somehow manages to be holy to his fingertips, that’s not an argument. Next!
4. But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for all the right-leaning indie authors to pull their books off Amazon. That’s where the money is.
The OP is telling right-leaning authors to pull their books from Amazon, even though he admits in the same paragraph that they’re not as converged as Disney and they’re the only way for us to make money. Dealing with Amazon is a requirement of my job–much as it is for millions of others. Shelling out ten bucks to be insulted by Disney isn’t (yet) mandatory.
If he’s got that much free time he doesn’t know what to do with, might I suggest he check out the cornucopia of public domain movies available for free online. The classic noir film The Big Combo comes highly recommended.
Much as I’d love to jump through more rhetorical hoops, I’d rather keep making a living while doing my small part to rebuild the canon of science fiction.
After the Catholic church got rid of the idea of a "just war", the culture war has really tanked. Self defense is now considered murder to some of them.
Now we're all supposed to sit like sheep while Western Civilization collapses and the US is invaded.
Trust me. Just War Theory as taught by the Thomists and the School of Salamanca is very much alive in many quarters within the Church.
Anyone who equates self-defense to murder or denies the right of a nation to regulate immigration is a heretic.
That's refreshing to hear. I wish you were a priest in this parish.
And a traitor. Indeed any govt that denies the duty of self defense is illegimateand must be replaced peacefully if necessary; violently if necessary
xavier
@ Heian-kyo And the death penalty is also still just in the Catholic Church. The proble, for the Church right now is she has a plethora of gay and/or Marxist clerical infiltrators running the Church, who are trying to get around the deposit of faith by changing the practices of the faith. It’s up to us, the laity, to start challenging these bad and false shepherds and get them to repent or quit.
Calling for a voluntary boycott is extremism now?
It is if your identity is defined by conspicuous consumption of SJW garbage-fic, and you're driven to feebly justify yourself.
I really don't understand these people. How is saying "these people produce crap works, don't give them money they'll just produce more crappy propaganda" an extreme statement.
We're not throwing people under the bus. I have anti trump friends who refuse to ingest the same garbage as well so this applies even beyond politics. Ive seen plenty of liberals say they're not paying a single dime to these companies until they sort this shit out.
It is merely the GamerGate mentality being broadcast against all of popular culture.
Fandom creates rose colored glasses for many people. What we see so easily, many don’t or they refuse too. I’ve had too many arguements over the Star Wars garbage where they admit my points are correct, “but the movie still isn’t that back! It felt like Star Wars.”
The pushing of subjectivity over objectivity has rendered many incapable of discerning fine cuisine from garbage only fit for a landfill.
I agree that it seems like a comment made in bad faith.
Don't give money to companies that undermine the fabric of society on which they depend. It is self-defeating and irrational, just like trading with (and thereby giving economic benefit to) countries that seek to overthrow or destroy us. I struggle not to buy from converged companies, just because it seems like every game company is run by crazies, but I was glad to be rid of Disney and Marvel. I always had to be on-edge watching their stuff, because any good was almost certainly to be ruined by some insertion of immoral or crazy nonsense. I was astounded when the Cinderella movie came out with so few glaring attacks, but they were only getting worse over time. Good riddance to a rubbish industry, and long live the cultural revival, and the creators within it.
As Jon Mollison said in his comment on this post over at G+, you don't have to quit cold turkey. do a budget–which is a good idea anyway–and see where your monthly entertainment budget is going. Odds are you'll be surprised by how much you're paying to converged services you don't even use. From there it's easy to start cutting back.
Cutting the cord is painful for the first month. After that, you'll forget you ever had cable/Netflix/an Overwatch account.
I didn't like cutting the cable, but I did before the term SJW was really a "thing." I'm struggling to convince the person whose Netflix account we use they need to cut the cord, but inertia is working against me there. All I really miss, video/movie/television-wise is Cartoon Saloon–an Irish animation studio that supported the recent repeal movement–and Studio Ghibli, which is distributed by Disney… darn them.
I just struggle keeping track of which publishers/producers on Steam actively support the destruction of everything right and good. I know I am horribly worried about my favorite game company, which is based in Sweden, that massive pit of all things converged.
But you are definitely right, cutting one or two things at a time is less shocking to the system. I have done it both ways, at various stages, and I definitely like the "all at once" way more, though. It just seems easier, to me.
Hey, I'm not the cord-cutting police. Roll with whatever works for you 😉
We aren't living in the 90s anymore. There is no more moderate position to take when they actively campaign to destroy things you love and laugh at you while they do it. You either support people who hate you, or you don't.
If you're looking for an "out" in this situation then just hand your wallet to Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy right now and be done with it.
These people hate you and think you're stupid and lower than pond-scum. I've lived among many of these types for my whole life. I know. Being nice to them and showing "Christian compassion" means nothing. They're above you. They have insulated themselves from the outside world and your backwards religion that they know is wrong and evil and will use every opportunity to subvert and destroy it wherever and whenever they can. Being nice is not going to stop them, just as it has never solved any problem in human history. We are not advancing to a utopian future where we are smarter than those who lived in the Great War. Human behavior does not change.
And being nice has nothing to do with being a Christian. Ask the Crusaders.
There ain't no chain link recliner. Everyone now has the choice of getting off the fence on one side or the other or getting burned down with it.
Regarding “niceness”, I’ve remarked to several people that the Left has made it clear that the only way they will respect our faith is if we take the route of the Muslims and kill every blaspheming liberal who mocks Christ in the public square. Their behavior towards the “religion of peace” shows the way. They cry and lie about the Inquisition and Crusades, but I think they secretly want them back.
As to intelligence, I think humanity has backslide in this department in the last 100 years, and in particular, the last 50. Too much dysgenic breeding born by deChristianization, soft culture, social welfare, birth control, and garbage education among other contributors.
We've still got blasphemy laws on the books. It also looks like we'll control the Supreme Court for at least a generation to come. I'll let you guys do the math 🙂
Can we start a lay order of Inquisitor-Crusaders to help pave the way for the future?
Already is one.
This is being swept under the rug, but Disney had a pretty bad day today.
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/animation-workers-set-to-receive-170-million-payout-from-wage-theft-lawsuit-161482.html
Colluding with other animation studios to keep animators' wages artificially low. Scummy.
"The money is coming from The Walt Disney Company/Pixar/Lucasfilm/Imagemovers Digital, which settled for $100 million; Dreamworks Animation, which settled for $50 million; Sony Pictures, which settled for $13 million; and 21st Century Fox-owned Blue Sky Studios, which settled for $5.95 million.
…The plaintiffs in the lawsuit presented substantial evidence that implicated Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios president Ed Catmull as a ringleader of the illegal wage-fixing scheme. The Walt Disney Company has done nothing to reprimand or punish Catmull for his questionable actions, and he continues to serve as the leader for both Disney and Pixar animation studios."
Good catch! Pour it into the sea or red ink from Soylo.
The fact that they *settled* for $170M speaks volumes. Disney has no issues with whipping out the legal teams to fight court decisions, yet they caved. Says clear-cut evidence of price fixing and collusion. Don't want FTC, SEC, and DOJ snooping too closely, eh?
Sure, $170M isn't much in the scheme of Mouse Profits, until you realize that future wages for animators will cut into future profits on new projects, forcing higher goals for returns at the box office and DVD sales.
It's going to be even harder to break even and hit needed sales marks for the Iger Sanction.
"That hill is getting higher and higher of late for poor Mickey. Best get him doin' some roadwork, Bob! Looks like he might be a touch out of shape."
Diversity and Comics and others have argued that we should support the few unconverged titles to encourage a shift to Marvel/Disney making more of those and less of the poisonous ones. He roasts bad comics, but recommends the ones he finds to be good.
I'll stand by the Infinity War movie's quality, but I've had a debate about whether it's better to pirate the movie or reward it with money as a sign to do more of the same.
Your take?
I'm not Brian, but I will say that when it comes to the MCU that it doesn't really matter at this point. Avengers 4 is basically the grand finale of this whole thing (even if Marvel will fight tooth and nail against it) and there is little anyone can do to deter one from watching it after a decade's investment. After that? I expect many will be walking away, especially with the rumor of them heading to SJW territory. That's when they should be hit hardest by withholding wallets.
That is sort of the same thing with DC and Marvel. There are a few titles that aren't in the toilet, and some hold out hope that DC isn't converged (at least they do not allow their writers and artists to insult customers, so there's that) but it would probably do better to find other companies or creators that are more willing to cater to their audiences. I have no problem supporting a book if the writer and artist do not hate me despite never meeting me.
Also, D&C is a good guy, but he also recommended the new Dr. Strange comic as it was good. But it was still written by Mark Waid, and he knows known of his viewers will buy it.
Seconding what JD said. Since he covered the practicalities from the consumer angle, I'll give you my take from the POV of the talent.
It's certainly important to consider the effects of a boycott on innocent parties whose wallets may take a hit in the crossfire.
But consider this, too: Ethan Van Sciver recently gave his fans a glimpse into working conditions at DC, by many accounts the less converged of the Big Two, and he described stealth Republican talent hiding under desks.
EVS also shed light on the dire state of creator compensation. The legacy comics industry is already a business where only a handful of rock stars are making decent money while most of the guys in the bullpen have trouble making ends meet. And that's without us boycotting.
My question to you is, why would you want the comic writers and artists you care about to keep working for publishers where they don't earn a living and must endure abuse from their SJW coworkers?
Richard and Ethan have shown that going back to a modified patronage model is a viable way to thrive in comics. Going indie is the best option for comic artists and writers. The Big Twos' demise would give them excellent encouragement.