Category: Uncategorized

This guy gets it

As I said previously, this is the defining moral conflict of our times.

From the Book of Mormon:

7 And now I write somewhat concerning the sufferings of this people. For according to the knowledge which I have received from Amoron, behold, the Lamanites have many prisoners, which they took from the tower of Sherrizah; and there were men, women, and children.

8 And the husbands and fathers of those women and children they have slain; and they feed the women upon the flesh of their husbands, and the children upon the flesh of their fathers; and no water, save a little, do they give unto them.

9 And notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue—

10 And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts, because of the hardness of their hearts; and they do it for a token of bravery.

11 O my beloved son, how can a people like this, that are without civilization—

12 (And only a few years have passed away, and they were a civil and a delightsome people)

13 But O my son, how can a people like this, whose delight is in so much abomination—

14 How can we expect that God will stay his hand in judgment against us?

Moroni 9:7-14

The atrocities that we saw by Hamas on October 7th were on exactly the same level as the atrocities in the closing chapters of the Book of Mormon. The only thing we haven’t heard about is cannibalism, both of Hamas fighters against the victims, and of the hostages fed with the flesh of their own children—but frankly, it wouldn’t be surprising, given the scope and nature of the atrocities we already know about.

And yet, there are significant numbers of people in the West who approve of the jihad against the Jewish people? Truly, we are swiftly passing from a “civil and delightsome people” to a “people… without civilization.”

The defining moral conflict of our times

In just ten days, this comedy skit has gotten about 1.2M views on YouTube, and probably a lot more on X. It’s gone viral for a couple of reasons: first, because it makes fun of celebrities, who most of us Americans now love to hate; and second, because most of us who have watched it feel like we’re in a similar position, thanks to the way social media makes celebrities and narcissists of us all.

I can sympathize with the confusion of most Americans, who feel like the recent escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came out of nowhere, and don’t really know who’s right. The last big “current thing” was probably the Russo-Ukraine war, and most of us have since come to the conclusion that there are no good guys in that conflict, only innocent civilians and impoverished taxpayers who’ve been bilked out of billions and billions of dollars while our insanely corrupt politicians vow to fight to the last Ukrainian.

Here’s the thing, though: you shouldn’t have to pick a side to be able to declare, without any misgivings or doubts, that this is evil:

Israeli Official: Hamas Raped ‘Women, Grandmothers, Children’ So Violently ‘They Broke Victims’ Pelvis’

Unlike most Americans, I am not unfamiliar with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I studied it for four years in college, interned briefly with a major K-street foreign policy think tank, and traveled both to Israel and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria. At the time, I was very pro-Palestinian.

My school (Brigham Young University) was actually more conservative and a lot more fair to the Israeli side of the conflict than most universities, but even back in the 2000s the entire American academic establishment had a very anti-semitic bent, and the things I didn’t learn—the lies of omission, especially about the history of anti-semitism in the Arab world—could fill volumes.

The other thing that red-pilled me away from my pro-Palestinian stance was the realization that Islam teaches that it is virtuous to lie to the unbeliever in order to further the cause of Islam. This principle is called “taqiyya,” and when you realize that everything we as kaffirs think we know about Islam has been transmitted to us by someone who was taught to lie to us about Islam, it makes a lot more sense. Not all Arabs are Muslim, and within Islam there are a lot of sects and divisions, but all of them share this principle of taqiyya, and the overwhelming majority of Palestinians are Muslim.

Back in my pro-Palestinian days, there were a number of things that I had to either ignore or chalk off as anomalies in order to maintain my pro-Palestinian views. Things like the insane popularity of Hitler’s Mein Kampf all across the Arab world, perhaps only rivaled by the Qur’an. Things like the fact that generations of Palestinians who have never even set foot in the disputed territories demand the “right to return,” while Arabs displaced from other conflicts, such as the Syrian civil war, have no qualms about picking up and leaving their ancestral homelands. Things like the fact that Hamas, Fatah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian terror groups deliberately target civilians, whereas Israel goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. Can you imagine what would happen if the Israelis used their own people as human shields the way that Hamas does? Hans… are we the baddies?

As someone who spent a significant portion of his life studying this conflict, and has since had a 180 degree change of view, the October 7th massacre was extremely clarifying. All those things that I used to chalk up as anomalies now fit into place in a way that makes me wonder how I didn’t see it before. The biggest of these has to do with the anti-semitic origins of Palestinian nationalism in the first place. Before the Balfour Declaration, which started the ball rolling for the formation of a Jewish state on historically Jewish lands, there was no concept of a Palestinian nation. Indeed, until the 20th century, the concept of the Westphalian nation-state was foreign to the Arabs, who instead tended to identify with their local community or tribal affiliation. From the beginning, Palestinian nationalism was created and deliberately cultivated as a means of accomplishing exactly what Hamas did on October 7th: the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the Jews.

Which is not to say that the people we call “Palestinians” were not themselves violently displaced by the wars in 1948 and 1967. Unlike what some conservative commentators have said in recent weeks, these people were not “squatters,” but legitimate inhabitants of these lands. Indeed, many of them are descendants of the ancient Jewish people who converted to Christianity, and thus remained on the land after the Romans pacified Judea in the first century AD and drove their fellow Jews from their homeland. It’s a very ancient and complex conflict, which is why I can sympathize with Ryan Long’s comedy sketch.

But what’s happened with the Palestinians is the same thing that’s happened with the blacks and BLM, the American Indians and the decolonization movement, gender dysphoria victims and the transgender movement, same-gender attracted peoples and the LGBTQ+ movement, and women generally and radical feminism. It all follows the same pattern. First, the radical left identifies a minority which they can pretend to champion as an “oppressed class.” Then, once they have established themselves as representing that particular group, they redifine that group’s cause to fit into their grand goal, which is to overthrow Western civilization and establish a Marxist utopia.

Let’s be honest. There are only two ways that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can end. The first is for every Israeli Jew to meet the same end as the victims of the October 7th massacre, or to be violently and permanently driven from their land. The second is for the vast majority of the Palestinians to be resettled somewhere other than the so-called Palestinian Territories, and for Israel to annex those lands. The October 7th massacre didn’t kill the two state solution, so much as it revealed that it was never a viable solution to begin with. How could it, when Hamas—and by extension, those who support Hamas—view the state of Israel itself as an “occupation” of their lands?

Of course, history never truly has an end, so the default is for the current state of affairs to continue in a metastable state until it is either displaced by an outside force, or ceases to be metastable. From 1973 to the present, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was metastable, which allowed the myth of the two state solution to take hold. The so-called “peace process” itself became an industry, and a lot of people built profitable careers by propagating this myth. At the same time, the ant-semitic forces that want to cleanse the Holy Land (and ultimately the world itself) of all Jewish blood also propagated this myth, because so long as the Palestinian people remained in refugee camps instead of being resettled elsewhere, the conflict could continue.

But now, the situation has changed. We are living through the midst of a fourth turning, where conflicts such as this one are no longer metastable, and the old order itself comes crashing down. According to Strauss and Howe, who developed the theory of generational turnings and secular cycles, fourth turnings always start with a lot of chaos and confusion, but somewhere in the middle an event or development happens that brings moral clarity to the conflict, which in turn brings everything into focus.

In the Civil War cycle, this event was the Emancipation Declaration. Slavery was always a major underlying issue to the conflict, but until Abraham Lincoln clearly and unambiguously identified it as the war’s main cause, the war spiraled from a gentleman’s contest on the shores of the Manassas to a bloody chaotic conflageration engulfing the whole nation, and the Union lost almost every battle. After the Emancipation Declaration, the Union won almost every battle until the South was firmly defeated and the 13th amendment made every state a free state.

In the last fourth turning, this event was the holocaust. World War II started as a series of border disputes between the expansionist Axis powers and their neighbors, but after the conflict when global and it became clear that the Nazis wanted nothing less than the extermination of the Jews (and Roma and Slavs and…), moral clarity was achieved. That’s why the Great Power cycle ended with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the past two weeks, and now I firmly believe that the October 7th massacre was the event that brought moral clarification to our own fourth turning. Therefore, the moral conflict of our times comes down to this: should the Jews (and by extension all “oppressor” classes, including straight white males) be liquidated in the name of “justice,” “equity,” and “decolonization,” or should we reject the Marxist utopia, return to God, and preserve God’s ancient covenant people—the Jews?

The third world war has probably already begun. This is the defining moral conflict of our times. There will be no return to the status quo ante: the Israeli-Hamas war will continue to expand until there is a decisive victory on the one hand or the other. We are still in the early stages where this particular armed conflict can be contained, but make no mistake: the forces arrayed against Israel, both foreign and domestic, are also arrayed against the West. I hope that the Israel-Hamas war ends before it spirals into a global conflageration, but even if this particular conflict isn’t the volcano, it lies on the same moral fault line.

What should that mean for us, who aren’t directly involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Should we send over billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, and ultimately put boots on the ground in that conflict? I don’t know about that, but I do know that we need to repent and return to God, both as individuals and as a nation, and that we need to call out evil for what it is, especially what we saw on the October 7th massacre. But we shouldn’t stop there. We should call out the evil behind every element of the anti-semitic Leftist agenda, and not just those parts that have to do with the Jews. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the castration and mutilation of gender-confused children, the ongoing slaughter of the unborn, the naked racism of the so-called “anti-racists,” the LGBTQ+ grooming happening in our schools—basically, every social justice cause that has ever been championed by the people now championing the cause of Palestine and Hamas.

This is our moment of moral clarity. Will we stand against evil, or will we fail to call it out for what it is? The October 7th massacre of Israeli Jews by Hamas terrorists was evil—arguably, more evil than the holocaust itself. Whatever else you believe, if you can’t come out and say that, you are, indeed, one of the baddies.

Back from Coeur d’Alene

It occurs to me that most of my posts in the past month have either been extremely doom-and-gloom, or they’ve been excerpts from some of my most recent work. This probably gives the impression that I’m huddled in a corner somewhere, black-pilled and traumatized, and seeking some sort of an escape through my writing, when really, that is not the case.

In fact, the main reason I haven’t posted more is because I’ve been so busy with life and family. It’s been a really great year for us, with a new baby and a bunch of cross-country road trips that have been a lot of fun. I’ve also been testing out a lot of AI writing techniques, and while that has really invigorated my creativity in a major way, it’s also taken me away from things like this blog, which is why you haven’t heard as much from me.

If I were still on social media, I have no doubt that I would be doom-spiraling right now, what with everything that’s happening in the world. Even without social media, I’ve been glued to the news sites I follow, checking for hourly updates on the war with Israel (which I really do believe is the opening stages of World War III). But that’s actually not very new for me: back in high school, I was the same way, following the news every day from the public computers at my school library. The 9/11 attacks happened on the first day of school for me, but in the last couple of months of the previous school year, I remember being frustrated that no one seemed to be taking this Osama Bin Laden guy more seriously, especially after the USS Cole and Kenya embassy bombings. Then the summer came, and I mostly goofed off, but as soon as school got started I was back to following the news on a daily/hourly basis.

So I’ve got a lot of experience with taking scary news in stride and not letting it totally consume my life. In fact, that’s the main reason I follow things like this so closely: so that when the unthinkable happens, I can face it without getting shocked or overwhelmed. And recent posts to the contrary, I’m not black-pilled at all. In fact, I tend to believe that I was put on the Earth at this specific period of time for a reason, and not just one that was imposed on me: that at some point, before I was born, I was given a choice between this and some other era, and I specifically chose this time to be born. Maybe I’m just imagining it, but it would not at all surprise me if that turned out to be the case.

In any case, we just got back from our last family road trip of the year, this time up to Coeur d’Alene to spend some time with Piper’s brother and his family, as well as my in-laws, who joined us on the trip. We had a really good time! Our daughter had a blast playing with all her cousins, especially the ones about her age right now. We also got to see her cousin’s baptism, so that was really good. Provo to Couer d’Alene is about an 11 hour drive, which is not quite far enough to justify getting a hotel, but for a 7 month-old and a 3 year-old, it was pretty hard. We’re all glad to be home now.

My wife is super busy working on her PhD. Specifically, she’s getting a paper ready for a major conference she hopes to attend with the rest of her lab. Her paper is on using AI to generate useful cross references across a body of work (eg Shakespeare, Jane Austen, The Bible, etc), and she’s developed a method that cuts down the cost of creating a cross reference set by upwards of 50%. But for the next couple of days, she’s going to be really busy with all of that.

Meanwhile, I’ve been taking care of the kids while the grandparents are on another road trip out to Omaha. It hasn’t been that bad, but I’ve also been pretty swamped with work, which one of the reasons I’ve been neglecting this blog. I have a bunch of ideas for posts I’d like to share, but no time to get to them, though hopefully that will change soon. Here are some of the posts I’d like to write:

  • A part 4 to my Navigating Woke-SF series. I recently had some experiences with the woke SF publishing world that have made me rethink things in a way that y’all would probably find very interesting.
  • An update to my generational cycles of grimdark and noblebright theory. This is one of the things I’ve been thinking about, and I’m starting to think that some of my basic premises in that post were wrong, or at least not entirely accurate, requiring an overhaul.
  • A lot of thoughts on AI and writing. This has been my main focus for the past couple of months, and I have thoughts. Many, many thoughts.
  • More thoughts on geopolitics and current events, especially on the trajectory of the unfolding global conflict and what it all means on a moral and spiritual level. But I think I should hold off on posting too much about that, since I’ve already spent so much time on it already.

Which of those things would you like to see next? I can’t promise anything, but I do want to spend more time on the stuff that followers of this blog actually want to read. In the meantime, I’ll try to intersperse a few quick update posts like this one, and get back into the habit of regular blogging.

How the Israeli-Hamas war will likely turn into WWIII before Christmas

The purpose of this post is not to pick any particular side or advocate for any particular action, but to give a back-of-the-napkin analysis of the current situation on the ground in the Middle East and project where it will likely go in the coming days and weeks. My goal is to approach the geopolitics of this conflict from a realist perspective and not let my own biases led to “wishcasting” or “doomcasting,” but these are just my own opinions, and I don’t have any special knowledge of the situation: just what I’ve been following from open source newscasts and political pundits.

What authority do I have to speak on this subject, besides just being a guy on the internet? In 2010, I double-majored in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from BYU, but please don’t hold that against me: I’ve since come to realize that most of what I learned in university is a lie, either of commission through the Islamic principle of taqiyya which states that it is morally virtuous for a muslim to lie to a kafir in the service of Islam (and guess where we kafirs have learned everything we think to know about Islam), or a lie of ommission, perpetuated by things like the history of anti-semitism that the American academic establishment studiously chooses to ignore. I also speak and read Arabic, spent a summer living, traveling, and hitchhiking in the Middle East, had two Palestinian roommates in college, and briefly interned as a research assistant in a major K-street foreign policy think tank, though I was fired early for having moral principles.

I’m going to assume that the reader is familiar with the basic history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as the events of the past week. The situation on the ground is changing quickly, and the fog of war is certainly beginning to thicken, but my understanding of it is as follows:

Israel is mobilizing an army of several hundred thousand soldiers for a ground invasion of Gaza, while the Israeli air force is striking suspected Hamas targets throughout the Gaza strip. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to launch several hundred missiles per day at Israeli targets, though it appears to be rationing munitions as it prepares for a protracted conflict.

With that said, Hamas is clearly targeting civilians while using their own people as human shields, whereas Israel is targeting Hamas while evacuating civilians from staging areas such as Sderot. That’s an important distinction, not only for moral clarity, but for the war for global public opinion, which is currently the most important aspect of this conflict.

Israel’s five war goals, as stated by PM Netenyaho, are: 1) defeat any terrorists remaining in Israel, 2) launch a massive offensive operation, 3) contain the conflict to Gaza, 4) expand support in the international community, and 5) solidify national unity.

Goal 1 has mostly been achieved, though there are still sporadic reports of gunfights with isloated Hamas terrorists still on Israeli soil. However, the border fence has been secured, and so far as I can tell, no new terrorists are crossing over.

Goal 2 is currently pending. The airstrikes are brutal and ongoing, but the real offensive is going to begin with the ground offensive, which is clearly with days or even hours of beginning. In fact, it may have already begun.

Goal 3 is much more tricky. Hezbollah in the north is reported to have 150,000 rockets aimed at Israel, and has issued statements of solidarity with Hamas. Some skirmishes and artillery exchanges on the northern border have already occured. In addition, Israeli forces have exchanged fire with Syrian forces across the Golan Heights, and just this morning, Israel struck the Damascus airport, preventing a shipment of Iranian arms from entering the conflict zone.

So it seems very unlikely that Israel will achieve goal 3, especially since Hamas’s primary objective right now is likely to draw in other elements from the Arab world. They’re already calling for a general jihad, so it would not surprise me if we see a major escalation across Israel’s other borders. It’s not a question of if, but when.

As for goals 4 and 5, Israel currently appears to be experiencing a level of success that I have not seen since I started studying this conflict. The sheer savagery with which Hamas has raped and murdered women and children has, I believe, strongly shifted sympathies in the West toward Israel. Also, unity among Israelis has also never been higher, by all appearances exceeding the unity I saw here in the US in the days after the 9/11 attacks. However, the situation is very dynamic, and changing by the hour. As the shock and horror of Hamas’s atrocities passes out of the news cycle, I expect that most people in the West will either revert to their prior opinions, or put the conflict out of mind.

In the Arab world, however, I suspect that it’s just the opposite. What Hamas lost in terms of public relations with the west, they have probably gained with most Arabs. Anti-semitism runs deep throughout the entire Arab world, and the proportion of Arabs who view Jews as non-people is probably as high or higher than the proportion of Germans who did so in the years leading up to WWII. But the blow to Israel’s reputation for invincibility has now been shattered by Hamas, which now makes this conflict an existential one for both parties. If Hamas survives the conflict with any capability to prosecute terrorist attacks, that reputation will be permanently shattered, inspiring thousands of other Arabs to take up arms until Israel dies by a thousand cuts. Therefore, Israel must eradicate Hamas completely before the war expands to other fronts, and the tide of global opinion turns against Israel as images of dead and wounded Palestinians drowns out the images we’ve already seen of raped and murdered Israelis.

I suspect that Hezbollah is waiting until Israel commits itself to a ground offensive in Gaza before they open a second front in the north. That will be the time when Israel is weakest, especially if they’ve already spent most of their munitions on Gaza. That’s probably why Israel hasn’t launched the ground offensive already. Will Israel launch a pre-emptive strike against southern Lebanon, the way they did against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan in the ’67 war? The biggest risks with that are 1) a failure or partial success that commits too many forces to the north, before Hamas has been sufficiently defeated, and 2) losing the public relations battle, which is already guaranteed to happen eventually, given the steps they must take with the ground invasion of Gaza.

When—not if, but when—the northern front to this war opens up, Syria and Lebanon will almost certainly be drawn into the conflict. Jordan and Egypt will likely try to stay out of it for as long as they can, since among the Arab states, they are more closely aligned with the West than they are with Iran. Until this summer, Saudi Arabia was also aligned against Iran, but that began to shift when both countries joined the BRICS alliance. Saudi Arabia has also been making overtures with China, who appears to be siding tacitly with the Palestinians against NATO and the West.

Will Iran be drawn into this conflict? If it becomes protracted, almost certainly yes. I suspect they will enter it by launching a surprise attack on a US aircraft carrier, either with a drone, or with a Russian hypersonic missile. If they can sink a US aircraft carrier, that would be a major blow to our own military reputation, which would represent a tremendous victory in itself. Based on what we’ve seen in Ukraine about the effectiveness of drones in modern warfare, our Cold War-era aircraft carriers could prove to be as big of a liability as the Maginot Line, when the history of WWIII is written. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The way to prevent Iran from being drawn into this conflict is to eradicate Hamas swiftly and completely, bringing the war to a decisive close before the Iranians have fully mobilized. But Hamas is deeply entrenched, having used the billions of dollars of foreign aid they’ve received over the years to prepare for exactly this eventuality. So the Gaza offensive is like to strike fast and hard, without much regard for civilians such as we’ve seen from Israel in the past. Because of how this will shock global opinion, Israel has only a narrow window in which to carry it out.

In other words, this Hamas-Israel war is not likely to turn into a long, drawn out war of attrition, such as we’ve seen the Russo-Ukrainian war become. It’s also not likely to become a frozen conflict anytime soon. As for a ceasefire, that’s just not in the cards; the stakes for both sides are too existential, and the window in which Israel has to act is just too narrow. It’s going to be brutal.

But here’s the problem from the American perspective: our economy is so strained, and our fuel and weapons stockpiles are already so depleted that if we send too much military aid to Israel, we risk giving China an opening to attempt an invasion of Taiwan. If we don’t aid Israel, however, and that northern front opens up before Israel has eliminated Hamas, then the odds of this spiraling into a regional war begin to approach 100%. We can try to deter Iran by sending in more aircraft carriers, but to what degree have those military platforms become liabilities instead of assets, given how technology has changed the nature of war? It only took about a dozen well-placed bombs to sink four of Japan’s aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway. How many cheap Iranian drones will it take to sink one of ours? But if we take the neocon path, that opens up China to take Taiwan, or Russia to bleed us out in Ukraine and precipitate the collapse of NATO, which appears to be their ultimate goal.

And then there’s the situation on our southern border, which has been completely overrun. How many terrorist cells have already come over, and become embedded in our territory? How many of them will be activated if the Israeli-Hamas war expands, as it almost certainly will? Will a Hamas-style terrorist attack on American soil strengthen our resolve, or shatter it?

Given these realities, I’m having a hard time seeing how we avoid WWIII—if indeed, it hasn’t broken out already. The battle lines will probably be drawn between US/NATO and the BRICS alliance, since the financial/economic divisions appear to be aligned with the geopolitical ones. And with all the financial and geopolitical blunders we’ve made since the pandemic, it appears that we’ve set ourselves up for exactly this scenario. Seriously—if I’d written all this as a novel, with our southern border overrun, our strategic petroleum reserves depleted, our shamefully disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, a hot proxy war with Russia depleting our military reserves, and the botched pandemic response and lockdowns driving massive inflation and a supply chain collapse, it would have rightfully been panned as a trash. And yet, this is the clown world we currently find ourselves in.

Before WWIII goes nuclear, I expect it will go cyber. I have no idea what that will look like, but it’s probably best to prepare for extended power blackouts and loss of basic infrastructure. Also, if I were China or Russia, when this conflict does go nuclear I would strike the US with a barrage of high altitude EMPs and watch the Americans eat each other. That would certainly force the troops to go home.

How do we prevent any of these scenarios from unfolding? The only way that I can see is for Israel to destroy Hamas before Christmas—but even that isn’t a guarantee, if we become so overextended that China decides to take Taiwan as a result. So if WWIII hasn’t indeed already started, I think we will almost certainly be in WWIII before Christmas.

If you’re smarter than me, please tell me how I’m wrong.

Thoughts on the recent escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

For the last couple of days, I’ve been going back and forth on whether to write this post. It’s not something that’s directly in my wheelhouse, and few things turn me off to other writers and artists more than when they feel a need to publicly post their every knee-jerk reaction to the political issues of the day.

But there are a few reasons why I think it would be a mistake not to post my thoughts about the recent Hamas attacks on Israel, and the new war that has broken out in the region. First, it’s a major watershed event, certainly for Israel, and probably for the rest of the world as well, especially if it spirals into a regional and ultimately a global war (which seems increasingly likely).

Second, I’ve actually had a lot of personal experience in the region, having traveled to Israel and the Palestinian territories, studied in Jordan, learned Arabic, and majored in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic from BYU in 2010. Longtime readers will recognize the influence of all of these studies and travels on my work, especially on my earlier novels such as Desert Stars and Bringing Stella Home.

What the Hamas attacks have confirmed to me is that everything I learned in university about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a lie, sometimes of commission, but mostly of ommission. Compared to most schools, Brigham Young University’s MESA program is actually very ideologically balanced. But it wasn’t until after I graduated that I learned about things like taqiyya, which is a principal of the Islamic religion that it is virtuous to lie to the unbeliever in the service of Islam (and guess where all of us Kafirs get our information about Islam). Also, we never delved very deeply into the history and development of anti-semitism. As a result, when I traveled to the Middle East, I was shocked to discover that Mein Kampf is still one of the bestselling books in the Arab world. At the time, I thought it was kind of funny, but not anymore.

So the heinous attacks by Hamas on the music festival and the various towns kibbutzim in southern Israel haven’t shattered my illusions, so much as they have given me a great deal of moral clarity. And I have to say that after seeing what the Palestinians have done to these women and children, targeting, raping, slaughtering, and decapitating them, I cannot help but feel that Israel is justified in making sure that something like this can never happen again—even if it means violently displacing millions of Palestinians to bring this generations-long conflict to an end.

The two-state solution is dead. Land for peace is dead. So is any solution that would involve integrating these pre-civilizational savages into Israeli society. My younger, more naive self would argue “yes, but Hamas doesn’t represent all the Palestinians! In fact, Hamas is an authoritarian regime!” But my older, wiser self who lived through the pandemic knows that authoritarian regimes can only exist because the people living under them comply with their rule. The reason Hamas is has been in power in Gaza for more than a decade is because this wanton slaughter of Israelis is what most of the Palestinians want. Because of that, I don’t see how any lasting peace can be made, unless either Israel or Palestine is destroyed as a nation.

This is a huge shift in my own personal thinking on the conflict, because as recently as ten years ago, my sympathies lay mostly with the Palestinians. But the actions of Hamas and the Palestinian people this last weekend have forever shattered those sympathies, and none of the footage of the bombings in Gaza is going to win my sympathy back. Not after what Hamas did to those Israeli women and children.

And when I see the activists and protesters here in the US flying Palestinian flags and protesting “in solidarity” against the “occupation,” I cannot help but wonder: is this what they want for me and my family? Do the people who consider themselves part of the self-described “resistance” against capitalism, colonialism, and “whiteness” secretly want to force me to watch while they decapitate my children, rape and murder my wife, and finally murder me? Or perhaps it’s not so secret anymore, since these people are putting pictures of paragliders in their event fliers.

If you “stand with Palestine” after the events of this past weekend, I have to assume that you are either willfully ignorant, or a pre-civilizational savage who answers only to force. Perhaps both. Either way, I will never stand with Palestine again.

2024 US election scenarios that would fulfill the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy

For a background and explanation of the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy, read this first. I also did a blog post about it here.

A lot of people who were following Ezra’s Eagle in 2020 thought that Trump’s presidency would end before the 2020 election, probably with an assassination, and that Mike Pence would be the second short feather. After the election, they thought Mike Pence would back Trump’s play for the alternate electors and become the second short feather that way. Since none of that happened, they took that as evidence that the prophecy was false. After all, if Trump was truly the first short feather of the eagle’s left wing, why did he serve out his first term?

But it’s become increasingly clear that the January 6th “insurrection” was actually orchestrated by the FBI and the CIA, with undercover operatives like Ray Epps who groomed the “insurrectionists” and urged them into the Capitol. For those who have been paying attention, the 2020 elections and January 6th event have all the hallmarks of a color revolution, perpetrated with the goal of 1) removing Trump from power, and 2) preventing Trump from running for office again.

If we assume that President Trump was the first short feather on the left wing, and that his reign was cut short with the FBI/CIA sponsored color revolution disguised as an “insurrection,” then Biden is the second short feather, and his reign has to end by January 5th, 2024 in order for the prophecy to be valid, since 2 Esdras 11:27 says “And the second was sooner away than the first” (speaking of the second short feather on the left wing). Therefore, if Biden is still in office on January 6th, 2024, the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is false (or at least this interpretation of it).

But Biden’s health is severely compromised, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that there are elements in the deep state and the DNC that want him gone—hence the impeachment hearings, the leaks and whistleblowers about the Biden crime family’s influence peddling operations, and the not-so-subtle calls for him to either step down or not seek re-election. So is it unreasonable to think that he might not complete his term in the White House? Not at all.

So with that in mind, here are all the 2024 election scenarios I can think of that would fulfill the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy:

Scenario 1: Trump v. Biden 2.0, with RFK Jr. as spoiler

Trump gets the Republican nomination, and Biden gets the Democratic nomination. Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. runs as an independent (which appears to already be in progress).

After a historically contentious election cycle, RFK Jr. draws enough voters to prevent either Trump or Biden from reaching the 270 electoral votes necessary to win. This may or may not be aided by Trump or Biden being removed from the ballot in several states, ostensibly over Trump’s criminal indictments and Biden’s accepting foreign bribes.

Before congress can select a president, Biden dies under mysterious circumstances and Harris, under pressure from the deep state, cedes power to an “interim president.” An outside crisis is also engineered, either in the form of a financial collapse or a major global war (eg Russo-Ukraine war expanding into Poland, China invading Taiwan) in order to justify suspending the Constitution and “restoring order” after the election.

In this scenario:

  • Trump is the first short feather.
  • Biden is the second short feather.
  • RFK Jr. is the third short feather who “thinks to rule” (cf 2 Esdras 11:28).
  • Harris is the fourth short feather who also “would have reigned” (cf 2 Esdras 11:31).
  • The “interim president” who assumes power without being elected by congress is the first eagle head.

This scenario also works if Biden snubs Harris by running with a different candidate for vice president in 2024. In that case, the fourth feather would be whoever Biden picks as his VP, since that person should have become the president if the 2024 election went to Biden.

Scenario 1a: Harris as deep state mastermind

Similar to the above scenario, except that Biden snubs Harris by choosing a different VP pick, and Harris refuses to cede power after the lame duck session.

In this scenario:

  • Trump is the first short feather.
  • Biden is the second short feather.
  • RFK Jr. is the third short feather who “thinks to rule.”
  • Biden’s 2024 VP pick is the fourth short feather who “would have reigned,” and
  • Harris is the first eagle head.

Unlikely, considering that most people in Washington (and most of the rest of the country, too) consider Harris to be dumber than a box of rocks, but it is a possible scenario.

Scenario 2: Biden’s Dark Horse VP

After a contentious primary season, Trump loses the Republican nomination to Desantis or one of the other candidates. Alternately, after winning the nomination, Trump privately makes a deel with his deep state enemies to back down from the general election, in exchange for ending the lawfare persecution against him and his family. Either way, the ballot on November 5th shows someone other than Trump as the Republican candidate.

Meanwhile, Biden makes a deal with the deep state to snub Harris and pick their chosen candidate for VP, in exchange for the deep state allowing him to run again in 2024. Otherwise, the deep state would destroy him by revealing the full extent of his corruption.

The 2024 election is just as contentious as 2020, with the ballots still being counted weeks after November 5th and accusations of voter fraud muddling the results. Eventually, Biden is declared the winner, though half the country refuses to accept it. Then Biden dies under myserious circumstances before January 5th 2025, and his VP pick, a deep state insider, is inaugurated instead.

In this scenario:

  • Trump is the first short feather.
  • Biden is the second short feather.
  • Desantis (or whoever gets the Republican nomination) is the third short feather who “thinks to rule.”
  • RKF Jr. is the fourth short feather who also “thinks to rule,” and
  • Biden’s VP pick is the first eagle head.

Scenario 3: Trump as turncoat

Trump secretly makes a deal with the deep state, agreeing to become their agent in exchange for the presidency in 2024. They continue the lawfare as a smokescreen, but in reality, Trump and the deep state are working together to advance the same agenda.

Biden does not seek re-election, and Newsom wins the Democratic nomination instead. RFK Jr. runs as an independent. Trump ostensibly wins the election, though half the country refuses to accept it, and accusations of voter fraud abound.

In this scenario:

  • Trump is both the first short feather and the first eagle head.
  • Biden is the second short feather.
  • RFK Jr. and Newsom are the third and fourth short feathers.

Why would Trump join forces with the deep state? I think the better question is why wouldn’t he? He’s turned on his pro-life supporters, he’s never renounced the covid vaccines, and he never actually delivered on his promise to “lock her up.” He demands personal loyalty from everyone, to the point where that is his only qualification for making a political alliance, but he never reciprocates with loyalty for those who support him. Remember how he turned on Kayleigh McEnany? Also, he hasn’t offered to help with any of the legal fees for his supporters currently languishing in jail for their involvement in January 6th.

As for the deep state, if they could bring Trump onto their side, it would be a coup of epic proportions. With the Democrats clamoring for a police/nanny state, and the Republicans increasingly clamoring for a Caesar, making an ally out of Trump is the best way to thread that needle and secure their power.

I put Newsom as the Democrat nominee in this scenario only because he currently looks like the most likely candidate if Biden steps down. But it could also be Michelle Obama if she runs—in fact, it would actually work better with her, because she’s seen as having the power to unify democrats and independents, which would counteract the spoiling effect of RFK Jr. and throw Trump’s re-election into even more doubt.

Scenario 4: The deep state flips the board

Trump gets the Republican nomination. Newsom gets the Democratic nomination. RFK Jr. runs as an independent.

The deep state does everything in their power to prevent Trump from returning to power, but with RFK Jr. acting as spoiler, they cannot throw the election in the same way as they did in 2020. Therefore, before the election actually happens (or alternately, before the results are fully in), they engineer a crisis which allows them to 1) cancel the election, 2) suspend the Constitution, 3) remove Biden from the White House, and 4) install an insider as “temporary president,” until the crisis is over.

In this scenario:

  • Trump is the first short feather.
  • Biden is the second short feather.
  • RFK Jr. and Newsom are the third and fourth short feathers, and
  • The “temporary president” is the first eagle head.

What sort of a crisis could the deep state engineer? It could be an expansion of the Russo-Ukraine war, due to some sort of false flag or NATO provocation, or it could be a financial crisis that causes a global credit freeze, shutting down the banks. This would have the added benefit of paving the way for the rollout of a Federal Reserve central bank digital currency (CBDC), with the Fed and/or Treasury promising to back all frozen bank deposits at a rate of 1:1, provided that the depositors accept the new CBDC. They could force compliance by threatening not to redeem the deposits of anyone who protests the move. Most Americans, caught off guard (just like with the pandemic), would probably not resist. A CBDC would also fulfill the prophecy of the mark of the beast in the Book of Revelation.

Scenario 4a: The deep state refuses to play

Desantis gets the Republican nomination. Biden steps down, and a dark horse candidate whom the deep state has not approved gets the Democratic nomination. RFK Jr. is either assassinated or otherwise removed from the election.

Because neither Desantis nor the Democratic dark horse candidate are acceptable to the deep state, they engineer a crisis that cancels the election, suspends the constitution, removes Biden the White House, and installs one of their own (see above).

In this scenario:

  • Trump is the first short feather.
  • Biden is the second short feather.
  • Desantis and the dark horse are the third and fourth short feathers, and
  • the “temporary president” is the first eagle head.

Very similar to the previous scenario, except that RFK is removed from contention first. Also, I suppose that Newsom could be a dark horse candidate that is unacceptable to the deep state, but I think that’s unlikely, given how the Californication of America seems to be the deep state’s ultimate goal, at least domestically. Douglas MacGregor has an excellent take on that here.

Scenario 5: Obama as deep state mastermind

Desantis wins the Republican nomination. Michelle Obama wins the Democratic nomination. RFK Jr. runs as an independant.

With Trump no longer on the ballot, independents are evenly split between Desantis and Obama, and RFK Jr. acts as a spoiler for the democrat vote. But since Obama is the deep state’s preferred candidate, they either cancel the election outright or declare her the winner before the results have been verified. Alternately, the election actually happens and neither candidate gets to 270 electoral votes, leading congress to choose the president. During the lame duck session, Biden dies or is otherwise removed from office, and Harris cedes power to Obama.

In this scenario:

  • Trump is the first short feather.
  • Biden is the second short feather.
  • Desantis and RFK Jr. are the third and fourth short feathers, and
  • Michelle Obama (or perhaps her husband, if he’s the one really calling the shots) is the first eagle head.

So what are the scenarios where the Ezra’s Eagle prophecy is not fulfilled? Pretty much only the ones where Biden serves out his full term all the way to the 2024 inauguration, and/or the 2024 election results are clear and uncontested. I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d rather put my money on one of the five scenarios listed above than on either of those things holding true.

A letter to Christina Paxson, President of Brown University

President Christina Paxson,

I am sending this email to you because your voice mailbox is full, no doubt from listeners (such as myself) of popular conservative commentator Matt Walsh who gave us your (publicly listed) number and email address and encouraged us to reach out to you. Lest you think that this email constitutes harassment, I am a father of two young children who is actively researching our long-term education options and considering whether or not to encourage them to attend a university such as your own. I myself attended the Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, MA, and many of my high school classmates went on to attend Brown.

It has come to my attention that a PhD student and member of your university community named Sarah Celeste Griffith has, for several months, been calling for the vigilante execution of Matt Walsh at his home. This is an explicit call for violence that, to my knowledge, is not protected by even the most liberal (in the non-political sense) interpretation of the first amendment, and yet your university has not taken any action to censure or discipline this student.

Based on the fact that this has been happening for several months, I can only conclude that your administration tacitly supports explicit and illegal calls for violence against Matt Walsh and his family. Is this correct, or is there more to this story (such as the incompetence of your own administration and staff) of which we are unaware? Now that Brown’s support of this student’s illegal and lawbreaking behavior has been made public, will you take actions to discipline or expel this student? Or is such violence and political intolerance exemplary of the values of a Brown University education—values that I, as a parent of young and intelligent children, can expect Brown University to instill in them, should I send them to Brown?

Thank you for your time,

Joe Vasicek

In Defense of Black & White Morality

I was born in 1984, and for most of my life, stories with black and white morality—in other words, stories about the struggle between good and evil, with good guys who are good and bad buys who are bad—have been considered unfashionable and out of style. This is especially true of fantasy, where grimdark has been the ascendant subgenre for basically the past two decades. The Lord of the Rings movies gave us somewhat of a respite from this, but the popularity of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones seems to have turned everything darker and grittier, to the point where I just don’t enjoy reading most new fantasy anymore.

I remember going to conventions like World Fantasy 2009 and talking with other aspiring writers, most of whom could not stop gushing about this George R.R. Martin guy and how he was subverting reader expectations in new and innovative ways. So I picked up a copy of Game of Thrones, and after finishing it, I thought: “yeah, the writing was pretty good, and the story did have a lot of unexpected twists… but I hated literally every character in this book who was still alive by the end of it.”

Looking back, it seems like the greatest reader expectation that GRRM subverted was the expectation that he would finish the damned books. Then again, the books only really took off after the TV series got big, and I suspect that the real reason the TV series got so big was because of all the porn sorry, the sexposition that the writers threw in. (Sex + exposition = sexposition. Seriously, the term was coined because of Game of Thrones.)

So for at least the last three decades (Game of Thrones came out in 1996), grimdark fantasy has been in style, with its morally ambiguous characters and its gray-on-grey or gray-on-black morality. Meanwhile, stories that are unambiguously about the struggle between good and evil have been considered trite, passé, or otherwise out of style. We live in a modern, complex world, and stories with such black-and-white conflicts are far too simplistic and unsophisticated to speak to our times.

That’s a load of horse shit, and here’s why.

But first, because we live in the stupidest of all possible timelines, I need to preface this discussion by stating what should be obvious to anyone capable of free and independent thought: namely, that talking about morality in terms of “black” and “white” has not a damned thing to do with anyone’s race. Seriously. It is not racist in any way to use “black” to symbolize evil and “white” to symbolize good, and the term “black and white morality” is not an example of white supremacy or whatever. Frankly, only a racist would think that it is.

But if you’ve only recently recovered from the insane left-wing cult that dominates every aspect of our society right now, and terms like “black” and “white” still trigger you, perhaps it will help to keep these two images in the forefront of your mind as we talk about morality in terms of black and white:

Now, on to something of actual substance.

The biggest complaint against black and white morality is that it divides all of the characters into black hats and white hats. In other words, all the bad guys are unambiguously bad, and all the good guys are unambiguously good, with no room in the middle for moral ambiguity or complex ethical dilemmas. So in other words, the spectrum of morality in your story looks something like this:

Now, while that may work for a certain kind of story, I will concede that it’s usually a sign of poor writing. This is especially true of epic fantasy, where complex worldbuilding and an expansive cast of characters is typical for the genre. Black hats and white hats might work for a twenty minute episode of a classic western, but not for a multi-book epic fantasy series.

However, when black and white morality is done well, it looks a lot more like this:

Notice that every shade of gray is contained within the spectrum. Indeed, allowing for the extremes of good and evil is the only way to hit every shade of morality and have it mean anything at all.

Think of Lord of the Rings. Yes, there are purely evil characters like Sauron, and purely good characters like Gandalf, but in between those two extremes there is a lot of moral ambiguity. For example, you have Boromir, who falls to the temptation of the ring but redeems himself with his sacrifice; Gollum, who ultimately rejects the last remnants of good that is in him, but still ends up serving the good in the end; Sam, who isn’t particularly noble or heroic, but bears the ring without succumbing to its temptation because of the power of friendship; Faramir, a noble and heroic figure who nevertheless knows his own limits and recognizes that the ring will corrupt him if he takes it; etc etc. Even the hero of the story, Frodo nine-fingers, succumbs to temptation in the end, and only succeeds in his quest by a brilliant subversion of the reader’s expectations.

Now, let’s contrast (pun intended) black and white morality with gray and grey morality, which TV Tropes defines as “Two opposing sides are neither completely ‘good’ nor completely ‘evil’.” Here is what that looks like when it’s done poorly:

…and here is what that looks like when it’s done well:

Does anything about those two images stand out to you? Because the thing that stands out to me is that they look almost identical—which means, as a newbie writer, it’s much easier to get away with a badly written gray-and-grey story than a badly written black-and-white story. Little wonder that all those aspiring writers at World Fantasy 2009 were gushing about George R.R. Martin.

Of course, since there’s only so much of this morally gray soup that readers can stand, two other sub-tropes of graying morality have emerged to satisfy the readers’ unfulfilled needs: black-and-gray morality, which TV Tropes defines as “Vile villain, flawed hero,” and white-and-gray morality, where “the best is Incorruptible Pure Pureness, and the worst is an Anti-Villain.”

Representing both of those visually, here is what black-and-gray morality looks like:

…and here is what white-and-gray morality looks like.

Much more satisfying than the nihilistic, soul-sucking soup that is gray-on-grey morality, but taken individually, neither one truly represents the full spectrum of moral complexity. The only way to include every shade of gray within your story is to do black-and-white morality, and to do it well.

Also, do you notice how the gray on the right side of the black-and-gray spectrum looks a lot darker than the gray on the left side of the white-and-gray spectrum? Those are both identical shades of 50% gray, but they appear darker or lighter than they actually are, simply by association with only one of the extremes.

Likewise, even if a black-and-gray or white-and-gray story is done well, it will still feel like it’s totally black or white. And if you read a white-and-gray story for the contrast reading after a black-and-gray story, the effect will be more similar to reading a badly written black-and-white story, regardless of the quality of either one.

To get the full spectrum of morality, with all of its finer nuances and shades of gray, you must include both extremes of good and evil. Remember, here is what that looks like:

Which is why it’s a load of horse shit to say that black and white morality is “unsophisticated” or “simplistic.” Done poorly, perhaps that’s true—but you can say that of any book done poorly. Done well, though, a black-and-white tale of good and evil is more satisfying and complete than any other kind of tale is capable of being, even if done well.

“But Joe!” some of you may be saying right now. “What about blue-and-orange morality? What about that most bizarre of moral codes that is neither good nor evil, lawful nor chaotic, but bacon and necktie? What does that look like, represented visually?”

Fine. Here’s your blue-and-orange morality, which TV Tropes defines as “morality that’s bizarre, unconventional and distorted by human standards”:

He who takes the bacon path shall be with dinner blessed,
But he who takes the necktie path shall be for dinner dressed.

And here’s a poem by ChatGPT to explain the finer nuances of it:

In bacon’s sizzling embrace, flavors shall dance and sing,
A feast for the senses, a delightful offering.
Juicy and savory, its aroma fills the air,
Blessed is the one who follows the bacon’s dare.

Yet the necktie path, with elegance and grace,
Leads one to adornment, a refined embrace.
In formal attire, he walks the path of class,
Dressed for the occasion, ready to raise a glass.

For bacon nourishes the soul, brings joy and delight,
A savory indulgence, a culinary highlight.
While the necktie adorns, a symbol of esteem,
Preparing for gatherings, where memories gleam.

So choose your path wisely, with heart and desire,
Whether blessed with bacon or dressed to inspire.
For in the journey’s choice, a tale shall unfold,
Of dinners blessed or dressed, both stories worth being told.

Short-form vs. long-form fantasy

For the last month, I’ve been doing a lot of research into the fantasy genre, rereading all of the original Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard and a bunch of the other ones too, by authors like L. Sprague De Camp, Lin Carter, Bjorn Nyberg, Robert Jordan, etc. I’ve also been reading a lot of epic fantasy, like the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and the Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson. And I’ve also read some essays on the genre, most notably “The Critics, the Monsters, and the Fantasists” by Ursula K. Le Guin, and “The Making of the American Fantasy Genre” by David Hartwell. Oh, and opening a bunch of chats with ChatGPT, though those are of limited usefulness (for some reason, ChatGPT hallucinates like crazy when you ask it to recommend any noblebright fantasy that isn’t more than two or three decades old).

From what I’ve gathered, there are basically two camps or schools within secondary-world fantasy: the heroic / sword & sorcery camp, based off of Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, and the epic fantasy camp, based off of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. According to David Hartwell, those are the only two franchises to achieve breakout success: everything else has either achieved only moderate commercial success in its time before petering out, or gained only a niche audience. Apart from Conan, the fantasy genre as a whole didn’t really take off until Terry Brooks immitated Tolkien with his Shannara series, thus launching a wave of Tolkienesque epic fantasy in the 70s and 80s that morphed into Grimdark in the 90s, 00s, and 10s.

So for a while, I was looking into all the various tropes and archetypes that make Conan and LOTR tick, and trying to use those to differentiate the two. But lately, I’ve been wondering if maybe I’ve been overthinking all of this, and the real difference between the two is that Tolkien mastered long-form fantasy, and Howard mastered short-form fantasy. In other words, what if the defining difference between the two camps doesn’t have to do with tropes so much as with the length of the actual story?

I suspect that short-form fantasy is poised to make a resurgence, especially with all of the challenges associated with writing and selling long-form fantasy in the 2020s. Larry Correia is right: Rothfuss and Martin have ruined the epic fantasy field for new authors by failing to finish their series in a reasonable timeframe. Unless you are independently wealthy or already have a large and loyal following of readers, it just doesn’t make commercial sense to write a lengthy series of +200k-word fantasy epics. Better to write shortier, punchier 40k-word novels instead, especially if you can churn them out every other month or so. That seems to be the model that works best for indies, at least in adjacent genres like urban fantasy and paranormal.

Anyway, that’s my current thinking on the subject. What’s your take on it?