Author: photog

The SPLC bankrolls the KKK

photog Current Events, Trump , , , ,

This week the Justice Department has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center for fraud for paying white supremacist groups very large sums of money to play boogeyman for the Left.  Now, these weren’t undercover FBI agents they were real nazis and Klansmen who were among the leaders of these organizations.  And it was understood that they earned this money for providing the SPLC and other leftist organizations with talking points against conservatives and the Right in general.  And this has been going on for decades.  All the biggest outrages, like the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottsville, were included in the events that garnered funds from the SPLC for KKK and nazi groups.

Well, it’s official.  All the conspiracy theories that have been floating out there for years about false flag/color revolution operations by the Left and the Deep State were true.  If the SPLC was doing this just imagine what else is out there.  I imagine if the FBI could find the destroyed records, they would have proof that their own agents have done plenty of the same things for years.

But it is nice to see that while we still control the federal government some of the most outrageous frauds against the right will be exposed and punished.  The SPLC has one of the worst reputations for mischaracterizing conservative organizations as hate groups.  Last year they put Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA on their hate list and I’m sure that was one of the contributing factors in Kirk’s assassination.

I think it would be wonderful if the SPLC can be bankrupted and its leaders prosecuted both civilly and criminally to the fullest extent of the law.  People like this do untold damage and contribute to the degrading of freedom of speech and freedom of association.

It should be interesting as this develops to see what famous “nazis” turn out to have been on the payroll of the SPLC.  I’m sure many of us remember some of the more flamboyant “leaders” of far right from years gone by, that always seemed to cause more damage than progress for conservatives.  There may be a lot of answers to why every time a conservative moment arose some particularly idiotic leader seemed to surface and discredit the movement with a moronic statement or stunt.

This was something that I remember the ZMan used to speculate about.  For the most part he thought these people were just useful idiots who wanted the attention and gladly acted out the part of boogeyman de jour.  I’m sure this news would not have shocked him but it probably would have explained a number of specific characters and incidences from recent history that conveniently allowed the Left to use their Right-Wing White Supremacy narrative to demonize conservatives in all their favorite left-wing media sources.

Well, good work Kash Patel and the rest of Donald Trump’s Justice Department for exposing this organization for the fraudulent hate group they actually are.  I hope they get torpedoed this year and not later.

Ay, There’s the Rub

photog Book Reviews, Current Events, Literature, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Reviews ,

Lately there has been an enormous storm of controversy about AI being used in fiction writing.  Recently it came out that a self-published story that became quite popular was subsequently picked up by a major publishing house and re-issued with the full weight and authority of this powerhouse including professional editing and a new cover.  But then someone looked closely at the self-published edition and saw that not only was it significantly different from the professionally published edition but that the original was obviously a product of AI.  Now, that caused a firestorm and the publisher withdrew the book permanently.

But a cloud of questions swirl around the affair.  Surely the editors who revised the self-published edition must have recognized that they were dealing with a product of AI writing.  Why would they have purchased this title.  It’s assumed the reason was because the book had already found a ready audience and so the motive was monetary.  But there are other factors.  The authoress Mia Ballard is African American and Native American.  In other words, in the world of intersectional identity bingo she was a three-fer!  And so, she was exactly the kind of person that Hachette wanted for their imprint.  But there still remained the fact that she got a bot to write her story.  And that someone blew the whistle on her.  Of course, she claimed that it was an editor who added the AI sections and what she had written was her own.  Oh boy, that’s gonna be a bunch of lawsuits (or it’s just talk that won’t go anywhere).

Of course, the editors are defending themselves by saying that AI detection programs are far from infallible and so they aren’t to blame.  But supposedly the content was pretty obviously terribly written.  Of course, that really makes it interesting that the self-published book was such a hit on Goodreads with over four thousand reviews.  And that would once again jibe with the idea that the “bio” of the writer was one of the big reasons the book was so popular.

The whole scandal seems to show just what a mess the publishing industry has gotten itself into with identity politics becoming the most important factor by which authors and storylines are selected by big publishing houses for their imprimatur.  I guess the same problem is playing out with books that Hollywood is suffering from with their heavy-handed woke propaganda pictures.  People are staying away in droves and the monetary losses have finally gotten so severe that they’ve been forced to drop most of the woke plot elements just to lure paying customers back to the theaters.

Well, now that I’ve had a taste of what it’s like to self-publish a book I can say that a large part of the satisfaction in writing a book has to be because the author enjoys his creation.  Other than the one in a million phenom that finds the sweet spot in the self-publishing universe everyone else is talking to a small audience and in my opinion the only real failure is if you know that your book isn’t good enough for you yourself to read it for pleasure.

But how soon before AI slop is better than Shakespeare?  Ay, there’s the rub.

The Dispossessed – Part 1

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, photog's Corner , ,

People like me are relics of a bygone era.  What we believed in and how we lived don’t exist in the present day.  We are a shadow presence in a new world made up of people who believe in and exist in a different reality from what we had.

Now we can be angry about that but that does not change the facts on the ground.  The new world has taken hold and will have to play out over the next generation before any meaningful reaction to the status quo takes hold.  The only question is what we will do.  Some folks have just given up and withdrawn into their memories and mark time until their time is up.  Other people rage against the reality on the ground and make a bunch of noise.  Well, those are both understandable reactions.  The present situation is depressing and pathetic.

What I’ve been puzzling about for the last ten years or so is how to exist in this regime but still do the things I like and live the way I want.  And that is not a simple exercise.  I can’t claim to have cracked the code and found the golden way that bypasses the toxic problems that surround us, especially folks like myself who live basically in the belly of the blue state beast.  Now granted it’s not quite as bad as California where the insanity is reaching 1984-like repression but it’s bad enough.

As best I can guess the correct path is to form a network of people like myself and do everything humanly possible to avoid the crazies both in my internal and external lives.  Other than some family who qualify as the Left I avoid any personal relationships with the insane.  Some people enjoy baiting these people and arguing about their crazy ideas.  I get exactly zero pleasure from such activities.  My idea of fun is talking and interacting with non-crazy people.

As far as the outside world, that’s a lot more difficult.  Professionally and publicly, I am surrounded by some of the craziest leftists you could hope to imagine.  This is extremely trying.  Some of these people are looking to push their world view on anyone whom they bump into.  My general rule is silence.  I don’t agree or disagree with their statements.  I maintain an impassive expression and wait for them to finish their tirade.  If they make a point of asking my opinion, I just say I have nothing to say.  So, there are plenty of crazies that become agitated by that tactic but for the most part they eventually wander away sullenly.  So that sort of works for me.

But this isn’t a robust strategy.  What it lacks is a “congregating” methodology.  We are always just a small fringe at the edges of society and we never form a larger society.  Sure, on line we have friends and acquaintances but these are distant groups and they lack the opportunities for local activities that make life interesting.  That’s the part of this situation I haven’t managed to “fix.”  I used to kid about starting the “he-man woman hater’s club” and open a chapter in every town in America.  And I think that is the answer.  And the club definitely needs a women’s auxiliary to make us sandwiches that we can bring with us to the clubhouse where they’re not allowed to go.

And I kid about this but this is what we need.  Clubs for men are exactly what is missing from life for those of us who have no use for the feminist world that has taken over from the world we knew.