Now, you\u2019re gonna have to bear with me for a bit.\u00a0 This will be a rambling seemingly incoherent rant.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll try by the end to bring it back to the point.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Over the course of the last few years I have become aware of the range of \u201cphilosophies\u201d and personalities that exists on the right wing.\u00a0 I do not have an exhaustive knowledge of all the players, nor do I want or need to.\u00a0 I think it would be fair to say these personalities run the gamut from extremely sober to raving lunatic.\u00a0 And over the course of the last few years this has given me reason to pause and consider how or if I fit in with this spectrum of individuals.\u00a0 Surprisingly, I have learned that not all the serious individuals are right and not all of the nuts are wrong.\u00a0 Now, that doesn\u2019t make it easy to commune with the lunatics.\u00a0 In fact, most of the time you probably shouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 Lunatics tend to the mercurial and don\u2019t always play well with others.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t hear what they are saying.\u00a0 And by the same token, the sober guys may be charming and polite individuals but listening to them may be counter-productive.\u00a0 Especially if they are extremely clever.\u00a0 Sophistry can be highly entertaining and unfortunately also highly deceptive.\u00a0 To my mind that is kind of how we got where we are now.\u00a0 Cheerleaders for supposedly conservative ideas convinced a lot of people that the Bushes and John McCain and Mitt Romney knew what the word conservative means.\u00a0 That was sophistry.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So, the people you agree with logically aren\u2019t the same as the people you enjoy listening to.\u00a0 What that means is that you tend to have to compartmentalize your relationships.\u00a0 Some people you can discuss your political beliefs with easily and other people you can\u2019t.\u00a0 Some people are fun to discuss zombie movies with and others only want to discuss the actual apocalypse.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the most comfortable arrangement imaginable.\u00a0 It\u2019s sometimes annoying.\u00a0 And it\u2019s the way things are going to be for the foreseeable future.\u00a0 Trying to avoid this reality will lead to trouble.\u00a0 For example, suppose you have a good friend who likes the same sports you do.\u00a0 The two of you can go to a ball game anytime and sit up in the stands and talk all day about Joe Dokes\u2019 batting average or who the best relief pitcher is.\u00a0 It\u2019s great.\u00a0 But if you try discussing politics with him you\u2019ll end up in a shouting match and probably won\u2019t want to get together for months.\u00a0 Very not great.\u00a0 And alternatively, you might know someone either in real life or on the web who you agree with politically almost completely.\u00a0 The two of you can discuss politics and even cooperate on political action and other projects.\u00a0 A mutually beneficial relationship.\u00a0 But otherwise you have nothing in common.\u00a0 You like country music he\u2019s a gangsta rap enthusiast.\u00a0 You like science fiction he reads books on playing golf.\u00a0 Absolutely no common ground.\u00a0 What about these two scenarios?<\/p>\n
What about them?\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing wrong with either one.\u00a0 They reflect the reality of the world around us.\u00a0 You accept that division.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now, of course, the best case scenario is when both spheres align.\u00a0 Now you can talk about baseball and the revolution at the same time.\u00a0 Better still, you can start a fantasy baseball league for right wingers!\u00a0 And for something like baseball or hockey or NASCAR you might do quite well lining up people who fit both sides of the equation.\u00a0 No problem!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But what if your interest is photography or science fiction?\u00a0 Now it\u2019s not so easy.\u00a0 If you happen to be a photographer and also happen to not be a left winger you\u2019re probably aware that the majority of photographers both professional and amateur skew pretty hard left.\u00a0 As with a lot of the \u201ccreative\u201d professions these people seem to be steeped in a bohemian, urban culture that is extremely hostile to right-wing values and individuals.\u00a0 When I first got interested in photography I experienced this hostility over and over at a number of photography websites.\u00a0 It was both on a subliminal level and also on a purposeful, even confrontational basis.\u00a0 Whenever anything in the news offended the denizens of these sites it inevitably was dragged through the forum pages in the most strident and challenging terms.\u00a0 Basically, it was a public challenge to deny the libel being foisted.\u00a0 And interestingly if you succeeded in presenting a logical argument that was too convincing, the powers that be on the site were very likely to step in and either erase your posts (or force you to erase them) or ban you from the site altogether.\u00a0 To say this was a sorry state of affairs would be an understatement.\u00a0 The only way to coexist (what a loaded word) in such an environment would be to keep your mouth shut and ignore these virtue-signaling spasms.\u00a0 You can only imagine how much fun that would be.\u00a0 But there was no other way.\u00a0 Eventually I found one website that had a policy that I found commendable.\u00a0 They specifically forbade divisive discussions that involved non-photographic topics.\u00a0 So, no political, racial, religious or ethnic discussions were allowed to drift into an argument.\u00a0 It could be a little restrictive but it totally avoided the type of nonsense I was discussing above.\u00a0 Interestingly, I could still tell which individuals would be the worst offenders if it was allowed.\u00a0 They were always the ones being censured by the moderators.\u00a0 And it never was anyone on the right being stopped.\u00a0 Always rabid leftists.\u00a0 You could tell they thought it was highly unfair that they were not allowed to lecture us all on the topic of the day.\u00a0 I have to confess I took a good deal of delight in posting complaints against the worst offenders whenever I could.\u00a0 But it was still only a grudging allowance of what was obviously a despised minority opinion.\u00a0 I believe the site owner was a right-wing guy who found that, to avoid alienating the lefties, the best he could do was try to avoid all flash points.\u00a0 He knew that the demographics were against him and he settled for this uneasy truce.\u00a0 I still have great respect for the way he maintained that arrangement.\u00a0 It was the best environment that existed for right-wing photographers that I ever found.<\/p>\n
Another of my interests is (or was and now is again) science fiction and fantasy stories.\u00a0 Growing up in the nineteen sixties and seventies I can remember finding all the classic books by the Golden Age authors and just eating that stuff up.\u00a0 And there was all kinds of range to the quality of the stories.\u00a0 Some were great and some were pretty bad.\u00a0 And even as a kid I knew that.\u00a0 And yet, I could still enjoy even the bad ones because at least they were of a kind.\u00a0 They involved science and adventure and space flight and alien creatures and time travel and inter-dimensional mumbo-jumbo and especially cover art involving scantily clad green-skinned women.\u00a0 Who could ask for anything more?\u00a0 But as time passed and it moved into the late seventies something started to change.\u00a0 Fantasy books weren\u2019t about orcs and dwarves.\u00a0 They were about nature spirits fighting back against modern western civilization to protect Mother Gaia.\u00a0 And science fiction wasn\u2019t about humans exploring the galaxy but sexually confused individuals exploring their various orifices.\u00a0 And along with all these \u201cimprovements\u201d was the overarching message that the most important problem that science fiction and fantasy needed to solve was how can we make books that no straight white men would want to read?<\/p>\n
And I\u2019ll be the first to admit they succeeded with a vengeance.\u00a0 For a few years I still picked up new books and gave them a try.\u00a0 But without a doubt something bad had happened.\u00a0 It was like all the nit-wits who had made the sixties into a stinking hippie nightmare went off and got MFA\u2019s and started writing sf&f.\u00a0 And worse still they had taken over the publishing houses and the awards ceremonies and only allowed their own kind of stories to make it to the bookstore shelves.\u00a0 Well, eventually I stopped trying and gave up on the genres.\u00a0 I figured it was me.\u00a0 I was no longer a child and I had to put away childish things.\u00a0 But a few years ago, I read about the Sad Puppies.\u00a0 I think the link was at PJ Media.\u00a0 After reading about the Hugo Awards and the way nominations were only handed out to those who fit the club and wrote only right-think it all clicked.\u00a0 I read all I could about the Puppies and started picking up some of their books.\u00a0 And they were good!\u00a0 Of course, not everything was great.\u00a0 Some was just okay.\u00a0 But all of it was recognizable as sf&f.\u00a0 And there was a community of people who believed in writing stories and not social justice agit-prop.\u00a0 And they had websites where like-minded individuals could talk and discuss writing and stuff they liked without having to get approval from the better sort.\u00a0 And I heard them talk about what it used to be like before the Puppy movement, how everyone had to kowtow to the better sort and if you wanted to get ahead you had to like the right sort of stories and hold the right kind of ideas.\u00a0 And how even if you went through this kabuki act you still had to wait your turn and if you had the wrong plumbing and skin tone chances were you wouldn\u2019t ever get a shot at the brass ring.<\/p>\n
But what really sounded familiar was how everyone had to hate the same things.\u00a0 There was an orthodoxy and if you didn\u2019t hate George Bush and the military and straight white men, then you were cast out.\u00a0 And that I recognized.\u00a0 It was the same group-think I had seen on the photography sites.\u00a0 These were the same people.\u00a0 The Artists.<\/p>\n
And it got me thinking.\u00a0 If the Puppies could do it for sf&f why couldn\u2019t I make a photography site where right-wing opinion wasn\u2019t something you had to hide.\u00a0 Now I wasn\u2019t looking for some kind of gated community where only right-wing right think was allowed.\u00a0 But a place where I wouldn\u2019t have to hear a two minute hate every time Donald Trump\u2019s name was in the news.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s kind of my whole reason for making this site in a nutshell ( a very long 1900 word nutshell).\u00a0 I wanted this site to allow me to discuss right-wing issues both seriously and with a little humor.\u00a0 That\u2019s for all those folks who agree with me politically but don\u2019t speak my language on hobbies.<\/p>\n
And for those who happen to also have an interest in either sf&f or photography it\u2019s a place where I could talk about those things.\u00a0 And other general things like tv and movies and other culture topics with like-minded people.\u00a0 So, if any of those things interest you stop by and have a look and leave a comment.<\/p>\n
And finally after the revolution when I am elevated to the highest circles of the new order, hopefully in the movie version of my life story I\u2019ll be played by Ryan Reynolds and Morena Baccarin will play Camera Girl.\u00a0 And they really should include \u201cAngel in the Morning\u201d in the soundtrack but absolutely nothing by Wham!\u00a0 They really suck.<\/p>\n
See I told you I\u2019d bring it all back in the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Now, you\u2019re gonna have to bear with me for a bit.\u00a0 This will be a rambling seemingly incoherent rant.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll try by the end<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3,237,4],"tags":[376,46,49,189,377,12,38,11,265,375,107],"class_list":["post-1490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-photography","category-reviews","category-sff","tag-culture-is-upstream-of-politics","tag-dead-pool","tag-hugo-awards","tag-orions-cold-fire","tag-pj-media","tag-rabid-puppies","tag-review","tag-sad-puppies","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff","tag-sjws"],"yoast_head":"\n