Tag: politics

The Grand Conspiracy, Part 1: Malice or Incompetence?

Remember the time before the pandemic, when “conspiracy theory” was still a dirty word? It still is in some quarters, but for many of us the term is now closer to “spoiler warning.”

After all, what are we supposed to believe: that Epstein hung himself with a bedsheet that couldn’t hold his weight, from a height that couldn’t kill him, at exactly the moment when the guards had abandoned their posts and all of the surveillance equipment had mysteriously and inexplicably gone dark? That is still the official story—just like Ghislane Maxwell, Epstein’s Madam, was thrown in prison for trafficking sex slaves to… well, nobody, at least officially.

Or are we supposed to believe that a novel coronavirus whose genetic profile shows clear evidence of artificial manipulation jumped species from a bat to a pangolin to a human, in a Chinese wet market (which the CCP destroyed before any investigation could be launched) more than 900 miles from the bat’s native habitat, which also just happens to be down the street from the Wuhan Institute of Virology where gain-of-function research was being conducted with bat coronaviruses? I’m not generally a fan of Jon Stewart, but I think he hit the nail on the head with this one:

Of course, this isn’t to say that all conspiracy theories have weight and value. By no means do I believe that the moon landings were fake—there are just too many people who would have to be in on the thing to keep it secret for long, and also, we can see the tracks of the moon landings from Earth. But conspiracies do happen, and often have tremendous impact on the course of history. For example, the United States constitution was born out of the Philadelphia Convention, which conspired to throw out the Articles of Convention and replace them with something entirely different, which was technically an act of treason at the time.

Conspiracies are real, though not all conspiracy theories are true. The challenge is separating conspiracy theory from conspiracy fact.

Which brings us to the old aphorism: “never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence.” For the last two years, when I look at the direction my country is going and all of the harm that the Biden Administration has done, I find myself constantly asking: “is this malice, or is this incompetence?” After all, if my goal was to destroy this country, I could hardly do better than what this administration has already done (Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent article about that, and he says it better than me). And yet, every time the press secretary opens her mouth, I am reminded of just how staggering is the incompetence of these people. Or is it?

And then I had a realization: if you go up high enough, all of these people are useful idiots to a force of pure malice that is striving to bring about our spiritual enslavement and destruction. I am speaking, of course, of Satan himself.

Now, perhaps you don’t believe that the devil is real. Laying aside the aphorism that “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn’t exist,” you don’t have to believe in a literal fallen angel and his hordes of demonic followers in order to follow this particular rabbit hole. The devil is an archetype for a reason, after all. Personally, my own experience has convinced me that demonic forces do indeed exist, but that’s all I care to say on the subject, and I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

But my point is that it’s not like the forces of evil are monolithic: there is a hierarchy of conspirators and useful idiots, and some who may be conspirators on one level are useful idiots on another. At the bottom, it’s almost all useful idiots wreaking havoc by their own incompetence, but at the top, it’s all driven by malice.

Because here’s the thing: when we attribute a particular action to incompetence, we are making an implicit assumption about the motive behind that action. If we assume that Biden’s motive is to serve the interests of the American people, he’s doing a piss-poor job of it—but if we consider that he may have been compromised by China (as the Hunter Biden laptop implicates), or that he only cares about the Biden crime family’s interests, then his actions no longer reak of so much incompetence.

In the game of chess, there’s a thing called a gambit, where the player sacrifices a piece in order to gain an advantage of tempo or position. To the inexperienced player, a gambit often looks like a mistake. Some of the most brilliant chess moves involve a gambit that seems, at first, to be an act of utter incompetence, but that in fact make winning inevitable if the opponent falls for the gambit.

So even though “never attribute to malice” is a good rule of thumb, it’s clearly not sophisticated enough to explain all the insanity we’ve seen in the last two years. But neither is it sufficient to explain this insanity in terms of pure conspiracy—indeed, falling into that trap makes us susceptible to becoming infected by that insanity ourselves. Mattias Desmet points this out in chapter 8 of his seminal work, The Psychology of Totalitarianism. He also says:

In the whole process of exercising power—i.e., shaping the world to the ideological beliefs—there usually is little need to make secret plans and agreements. As Noam Chomsky put it, if you have to tell someone what to do, you’ve chosen the wrong person. In other words: the dominant ideology selects who ends up in key positions… Consequently, all people in positions of power automatically follow the same rules in their thinking and in their behavior and are under the influence of the same attractors.

One of the main points that Desmet makes in this chapter is that when people are driven by an evil ideology—or, in the words of Jordan Peterson, become ideologically possessed—their actions often appear, to someone on the outside, as if they are all part of a grand conspiracy. And yet, none (or at least, very few) of these people have actually entered into a clandestine agreement to support a deliberate plan: they are all just playing the part that they find themselves in, most of them unwittingly.

And yet, even though there is no “conspiracy” in the classical sense, the people who get caught up in the insanity all end up working to advance the purposes of something much bigger than themselves. Indeed, explaining this phenomenon is the entire purpose of Mattias Desmet’s book. He does a brilliant job of it, but mostly from a psychological perspective.

What I want to do is look at this phenomenon from a spiritual and an archetypal perspective, not as a scientist but as a storyteller. That’s why I’m calling it the “grand conspiracy,” even though I recognize that on most levels, it’s not a conspiracy so much as a confluence of interests (or more accurately, a confluence of lusts). I do think that there’s a lot that can be gleaned by looking at it this way, because there is a spiritual dimension to our lives—as Mattias Desmet emphatically points out—and stories and archetypes have been absolutely essential to our understanding of the world since prehistoric times. I happen to believe that Satan is more than just an archetype, but you don’t have to believe that in order for this grand conspiracy to be useful and make sense.

I’ve planned this series out in twelve parts, listed here. From now until the end of February, I’ll post about once a week. Since Christmas is coming and I don’t want to be thinking about all this diabolical stuff over the holiday itself, I’ll post part 2 next Tuesday, and part 3 the week after that, then go back to posting on Saturdays. The first three parts will outline the general theory that I’ve come up with, and the next eight parts will examine each piece of the theory in detail. In the end, I’ll share some concluding thoughts about how this grand conspiracy can—and indeed, ultimately will—be defeated.

I hope you find this series interesting, and I look forward to hearing what you think about it!

Part 2: Creator vs. Created

The Grand Conspiracy (Index)

What’s really behind the “Mormon Church”‘s stance on the Respect for Marriage Act?

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court overthrew Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision. This was a major legal and cultural earthquake. A big question that arose from this decision was how will this affect Obergefell v. Hodges, which codified same-sex marriage as legal back in 2015? Most of the conservative justices stated that Dobbs does not affect Obergefell, but Justice Thomas stated that he was willing to revisit that case.

In response, congress crafted the Respect for Marriage Act, which would require the federal government to redefine “marriage” in a way that would recognize same-sex marriage equally with traditional marriage. What does this mean for those who believe that marriage should be limited to a union between a man and a woman? As I understand it, those who espouse this view could be prosecuted for discrimination if this bill passes. There are some protections for religious institutions, but many conservatives believe that these are too weak, and that this law would put us on the slippery slope to churches losing their tax exempt status and possibly even being forced to perform same-sex marriages.

To everyone’s surprise, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came out with an official statement in support of this legislation, or specifically, this “way forward.” There’s been a lot of noise in the press about this, most of which is either misinformed or outright misinformation, so here is the full statement:

The doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints related to marriage between a man and a woman is well known and will remain unchanged.

We are grateful for the continuing efforts of those who work to ensure the Respect for Marriage Act includes appropriate religious freedom protections while respecting the law and preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

We believe this approach is the way forward. As we work together to preserve the principles and practices of religious freedom together with the rights of LGBTQ individuals, much can be accomplished to heal relationships and foster greater understanding.

Some outlets, like the Washington Post (where democracy dies in darkness), are reporting that this statement represents a doctrinal shift for the church, and an embrace of same-sex marriage. However, a careful reading should demonstrate that this is fake news calculated to create a false narrative and manufacture consent for that false narrative. Sadly, this is typical of MSM rags like the Washington Post.

Other commentators argue that the restored church has “surrendered to the spirit of the age” and is siding with Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who is ready to sign the Respect for Marriage Act as it stands, instead of Utah Senator Mike Lee, who is pushing for an amendment to the bill that would strengthen the protections for religious freedom.

Frankly, I don’t see that. The church’s statement does not endorse any specific legislation, but “this [new] approach,” and expresses support for “the continuing efforts of those who work to ensure the Respect for Marriage Act includes appropriate religious freedom protections.” (emphasis added) Yes, the statement came out before the bill passed the house and Mike Lee put forward his amendments, but I don’t see anything to indicate that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is siding with Romney over Lee.

But has the restored church gone over to the spirit of the age? At best, it appears that the church is making a strategic retreat in the culture wars. It’s certainly a far cry from the Proposition 8 debate in the 00s, in which Californians ultimately voted to ban same-sex marriage. What a different world that was! With this most recent statement, it appears that the church has switched from defending the traditional definition of marriage to pushing instead for protections on religious freedom.

How are we supposed to square this with paragraph 9 of the Family Proclamation? That was the question that Greg Matsen asked on the most recent episode of the Cwic Media podcast. For reference, here is paragraph 9 in its entirety:

“We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.”

When you read the rest of the Family Proclamation, which is a line-by-line, point-by-point refutation of many of the radical gender theories currently taking over our society (which is remarkable, since the proclamation was issued in the 90s, long before any of these radical ideologies had hit the cultural mainstream), it certainly seems to be at odds with the church’s recent statement, which supports “preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters” and “the rights of LGBTQ individuals.”

But what if those two documents aren’t at odds at all? What if the best way to “preserve and maintain” traditional marriage in our current cultural climate is also to preserve LGBTQ rights? In other words, what if the church isn’t capitulating or retreating from the marriage issue, but making a strategic retreat in anticipation of a new front opening up in the culture wars—a battle which will make strange bedfellows of same-sex marriage proponents and the defenders of traditional marriage?

In an ideal world, the church would want to foster a society in which the laws of the land are in harmony with the laws of the restored gospel—in other words, a society that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Obviously, we don’t live in that society (at least, not here in the United States). So what are our options instead?

On the one hand, we can accept that same-sex marriage is now the law of the land, and seek to promote laws that strengthen both the traditional family and the families of same-sex couples together. On the other hand, we can push for the libertarian approach of “getting the government out of the marriage business altogether,” removing the tax benefits and legal protections of marriage and making the state totally agnostic to marriage and families.

Which of those two paths is more likely to “maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society”? Which of those paths is more likely to lead to a society where marriage is considered to be obsolete and unnecessary?

Which brings us to the next major front in the culture wars, which I believe is going to be between those who view marriage and family as a social goods, and those who view the family as a “system of oppression” and want to deconstruct and abolish it altogether. We got a sneak peak of this in 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement posted the following statement on their website:

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

At the time, this statement created some controversy, and the organization ultimately took it down. If you search online for information about it, you get a bunch of articles “debunking” that BLM ever advocated destroying the traditional family. But the radical left’s modus operandi is first to hide and deny what they’re doing, then to accuse you of doing what they’re actually doing, then to ridicule you for pointing out what they’re doing, and finally to attack you for opposing it at all. We’re already well into the first phase of that process.

Black Lives Matter isn’t the only faction in the radical left that would love to destroy or abolish the nuclear family. Those who are pushing to normalize pedophilia would love to see such a cultural shift too. Same with those who are pushing the Cloward-Piven strategy of making us all more dependent on the state. Same with the Malthusian climate change alarmists who are pushing the depopulation agenda.

If this is the next big front in the culture wars, then conservatives might play right into the hand of the enemy by continuing to push a losing cultural battle for the traditional definition of marriage. After all, what better way to “get the government out of the marriage business” than to point out that we can’t even agree on the definition of marriage in the first place? And once the state becomes agnostic to marriage, we’re well on the slippery slope to a society that views the family itself as obsolete and unnecessary.

I would love to live in a society that recognizes the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, and that vigorously promotes measures to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society. Unfortunately, at this point it’s going to take a generational struggle to get us to that society—perhaps even a multi-generational struggle—and we’re not going to win that struggle by fighting the last generation’s war.

So has the restored church capitulated on the issue of traditional marriage? Has it surrendered to the spirit of the age? Hardly. If anything, I think the brethren are just as far-sighted and inspired as they were when they gave us the Family Proclamation. Be prepared to make some very strange bedfellows in the coming years.

Is politics the problem?

Steve Deace made an interesting point on his show today. They were talking about the tendency for some people to vote purely along cultural lines, even when they disagree with almost everything that “their” candidate stands for—or in other words, people who vote Democrat “because we are Democrats” or Republican “because we are Republicans.” In that context, he posed the question: in the Fetterman-Oz race, where Fetterman clearly is not mentally fit for the job, would he and his co-hosts have voted for the Fetterman candidate if the R and the D were reversed?

They all admitted that yes, they would have plugged their nose and pulled the lever for the incompetent candidate over the one from the party that is, in their words, advancing a demonic agenda. In other words, when you’re in the midst of a “cold civil war” (I don’t really like that term, but it is gaining traction for a reason), the most important thing is to close ranks and defeat the other side, no matter how bad your own guys may be.

With the way our politics are trending, I think there are a lot of people on Team Red and Team Blue who see it that way. I also think there are a lot of people on Team Don’t-Talk-To-Me-About-Politics who despise that, and are deliberately voting against the partisan firebrands because they are such firebrands. And that’s laying aside the question of voter fraud, which is really starting to piss me off. Seriously, if Arizona were a developing country, our State Department and half the NGOs in Washington would be crying foul right now and declaring that Arizona is no longer a democratic nation capable of holding free and fair elections. But I digress.

The discussion made me think about something my wife said about the abortion debate, how the deeper problem is that we only ever frame it in terms of what is legal, not in terms of what is good. By focusing on the law and on what is or should be permissible we overlook things like the rape victim who decides not to get an abortion, but put the child up for adoption instead, or the struggling young mother who doesn’t want to get an abortion, but doesn’t feel like she has any other option.

This tendency that have to make everything about politics, or everything about the law, is very convenient for those agendas that are seeking to subvert our individual liberty and sovereignty, and turn us from citizens into mere subjects and wards of the state. Under these circumstances, the more we look for a political solution, or turn to a political savior, the more we play into the factions with the anti-freedom agenda.

In other words, we don’t just have a political problem in this country: politics is the problem. If our families were strong, our culture were wholesome and uplifting, our churches (or mosques, or temples) were full, and our money were based on honest value, our politics would not be so toxic and divisive, because we wouldn’t feel like we needed our politicians to save us.

Of course, if this is true, it means that the partisan divide is merely symptomatic of a much deeper political problem. Even if one side got their savior, be it Trump, or Desantis, or Bernie Sanders—or dare I say, Barack Obama—the underlying issue would remain. And what is that issue? I suspect it has to do with our transformation from a nation of citizens into a nation of subjects, or of debt-serfs subjugated to a fundamentally dishonest fiat money system.

At the end of the day, we get the politicians that we deserve and are willing to put up with. Even the most totalitarian dictator only rules because of the will of the people. When enough people are willing to risk everything to stand up to him, that is the day that he falls. Likewise, it’s not our “sacred democracy” that makes us free. God made us free. The state cannot grant us the freedom that God has already given us; it can only take our freedom away.

Is this the worst possible election result?

As I write this, it’s the morning after the US 2022 midterm elections. The results aren’t totally in yet, but it appears that the Republicans are going to have a slight majority in the House, while the Senate is poised on the edge of a knife and could go either way.

Republicans had convinced themselves that a massive “red wave” was coming, and the fact that it didn’t materialize has left many of them believing that the judgments of God hang over this country. Meanwhile, the Democrats had worked themselves into a frenzy over the abortion issue, and the fact that the Republicans gained ground is probably making many of them fear that a Handmaid’s Tale future is not far off for us.

Those who believe that the 2020 elections were rigged by the Democrats have ample reason to believe that the 2022 were rigged as well, with some very suspicious anomalies happening in key Democrat strongholds. Meanwhile, those who fear that “election deniers” are a threat to “our democracy” have ample ammunition to support their views too, as the final results weren’t that far off from the polls.

The divided government is likely to give us two long years of gridlock, which wouldn’t be a bad thing under normal circumstances, but with inflation being what it is, the (manufactured) energy crisis crushing us, and the war in Ukraine getting messier by the day, we’re likely to see all of those things get worse, not better. The stock market might see a slight reprive, but the real economy is going to be a slaughterhouse for the next two years—and each side will try to pin the blame on the other.

Meanwhile, I doubt there’s going to be any real accountability for the criminals who gave us the pandemic lockdowns and the jab mandates, at least in the next two years. And the Biden administration is likely to get even more aggressive with their weaponization of the DOJ and other government agencies, since they won’t be able to get their agenda through congress.

In short, this election provided zero clarity, no firm direction, and is bound to reinforce everyone’s pre-existing biases, making the partisan divide even wider and the crazies on both sides even crazier. If we were on the path to a civil war before these elections, we are even more locked into that path right now.

Reading Resolution Update: After Action Report

My 2022 reading resolution: Read or DNF every novel that has won a Hugo or a Nebula award, and acquire all the good ones.

Earlier this month, I finished my last Hugo/Nebula book and ordered the last two ones that I hadn’t yet acquired. The first of those (Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin) arrived just this morning, and the other one (Way Station by Clifford D. Simak) is supposed to arrive next week, so I think that now is a good time to do a retrospective and share some of my thoughts.

There were 104 books in total, including the most recent award winners (I decided not to count the retro-Hugos midway through the year). Of those, I’ve read 35 through from start to finish, and decided that 24 were worth keeping. The rest of them (69, or almost exactly two thirds) I DNFed.

Finishing one in three books is actually about on par for me. I’ve found that if I don’t allow myself to DNF books early and often, I just don’t read. Also, it doesn’t really surprise me that nearly one third of the books I read all the way through didn’t really impress me. What can I say—I’ve a very opinionated man.

Of the 28 books that have won both a Hugo and a Nebula, I finished 12 (or about two-fifths) and found that eight (or a little over a quarter) were worth keeping. So not much different than the overall totals.

Of the 45 books that won only a Hugo, I finished 18 (exactly two-fifths) and found that 14 (about a third) were worth keeping. So my personal taste seems to be tilted more toward the Hugo than the Nebula. The difference becomes even more stark when you take out the 20 books that were nominated for (but did not win) a Nebula, a whopping 16 of which I DNFed. Excluding those, we’re left with 25 books, 14 (or more than half) of which I finished, and 11 (or just under half) I thought were worth keeping.

The contrast becomes even sharper when we look at the Nebula-only winners. Out of the 31 books that didn’t win a Hugo but did win the Nebula, I finished only five (less than one-sixth) and found that only two were worth keeping. Both of those were books that weren’t even nominated for the Hugo. When we look at the 16 Nebula-winners that were nominated for a Hugo but didn’t win, I finished only two of them (one-eight) and didn’t think that any of them were worth keeping.

So the best predictor that I wouldn’t like a book is if it won a Nebula and was nominated for a Hugo, but didn’t win. In other words, if the SFWA crowd (which is mostly authors) said “this is the best novel published this year!” and the denizens of Worldcon said “yeah… no,” that almost guaranteed I would hate it. In fact, just getting nominated for a Nebula is enough to make a book suspect.

This is why, earlier in the year, I posited the theory that SFWA has done more to ruin science fiction than any other organization. I saw this trend coming all the way back in the spring, when I was only halfway through the reading list. In the early years, SFWA was all about politicizing science fiction, and in the last few years, it’s basically turned into a nasty bunch of mean girls all trying to get a Nebula for themselves.

I tracked a few other awards just to see if there were any correlations. For the 18 books that placed in any category in the Goodreads Awards, there were only four books that I finished and two that I thought were worth keeping. Network Effect by Martha Wells received 22,971 votes in the Science Fiction category in 2020, which came to 9.69%. Blackout by Connie Willis gained only 337 votes in 2010, but that was 9.19% back then. Both of those books were keepers. The only other book that got a higher percentage for its year was Redshirts by John Scalzi, with 4,618 votes at 10.82%, but I DNFed that one. Most Hugo/Nebula winning books didn’t even clear the 5% threshold in the Goodreads Choice Awards, and in my experience anything under 10% that doesn’t immediately jump out to me probably isn’t worth reading.

Of the six Hugo/Nebula books that were nominated for a Dragon Award, the only one I even really finished was Network Effect by Martha Wells. But that makes sense, since it’s no great secret that the Hugo/Nebula crowd is trying to sabotage the Dragons by pulling exactly the same shenanigans that they accused the Sad Puppies of doing. Accusation is projection is confession, after all. As of 2022, there has never been a Hugo/Nebula winning book that has also won a Dragon, and while part of me hopes that it stays that way, another part of me is very curious to read the first book that does.

Almost all of the 104 Hugo/Nebula winning books placed somewhere in the various Locus recommended reading lists, which isn’t surprising since those lists are generally regarded as feeders for the Hugos and Nebulas (and used to get more people voting in them, too). Of the seven books that weren’t on a Locus list, the only one I finished was They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, which also has the distinction of being the most difficult book to find.

(A lot of people think They’d Rather Be Right was the worst book to ever win a Hugo, but I actually enjoyed it. Unlike most Hugo/Nebula books, it was remarkably anti-Malthusian, which is probably why it’s so hated. As for the worst book to ever win a Hugo, I personally grant that distinction to Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre.)

There were only ten Hugo/Nebula books that won or were nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and I only finished two of them (and didn’t think either were worth keeping). Perhaps that means that makes it the actual best predictor that I’ll hate a book, but ten is a pretty small sample size, so I’m holding off judgment for now.

The best two decades for me were the 50s (7 books, 4 keepers) and the 00s (16 books, 6 keepers), though the 80s came in close with five keepers out of sixteen books—and let’s be honest, Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis are basically two halves of the same book. In contrast, the worst two decades were the 70s (only one keeper out of 13 total books) and the most recent decade, the 10s (15 books, 2 keepers).

So far, the 20s aren’t shaping up to be much better. In fact, I think it’s entirely fair to say that given the state of fandom since the election of President Trump (and the general state of insanity in this post-Trump era), a Hugo or a Nebula should count as a mark against a book, rather than for it. That is, the primary value of these awards is to tell you which books to avoid. Perhaps this will change at some point in the future, like it did after the madness of the 70s or the malaise of the 90s (not a good decade for science fiction, apart from books published by Baen), but I’m not holding my breath.

So that was my reading resolution for 2022. If I hadn’t allowed myself to DNF, I can guarantee that I never would have accomplished it. As it stands, though, I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out.

What sort of reading resolution should I set for 2023?

The argument that converted me to pro-life

I’ve never been one of these pro-abort people who sees abortion as a virtue or a fundamental right. I do understand the “my body, my choice” argument and still think that it carries some weight—after all, bodily autonomy is an important component of personal liberty and sovereignty—and for a long time, that argument had won me over. I also bought into the lie (and it is a lie) that when abortion was illegal, thousands of women were dying in back-alley abortions, so therefore it’s better to legalize and regulate it than it is to just make it illegal across the board. I also believed (and to an extent, still believe) that there are circumstances where an abortion should be legal, such as ectopic pregnancies, other instances of severe health threats to the mother (including mental health), and cases of rape and incest.

But mostly, I just didn’t want to think about abortion. It’s a very icky subject. Also, because I’m a man and will therefore never be pregnant (contrary to extreme leftist dogma, which apparently holds that nothing in this world is real, or sacred, or true), I didn’t think that the issue really affected me, and was more or less bullied into believing that as a man, I wasn’t qualified to have an opinion. This was something to be left “between a woman and her doctor,” and to my shame, I was content to leave it that way.

Then I graduated from university and went out into the “real world,” declining to pursue a master’s degree (which I am totally convinced is the best life decision I have ever made). After a few years outside of the cloistered halls of academia, my political views began to change rather radically. I can’t point to a single thing as my “red-pill moment,” but the insanity of the 2016 US election brought the pot to a boil, and I found myself rethinking everything that I thought I knew.

One of the voices of reason and sanity that I discovered during this time was Jordan B. Peterson. I don’t know what Peterson’s views on abortion are, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he adopts a position that makes most pro-lifers uncomfortable. He’s very good at being a contrarian. But while I was following Peterson, reading 12 Rules for Life and listening to a bunch of his lectures and interviews, I came across this point that he often makes:

You probably would have been a Nazi. They weren’t all that different from you—and besides, you’re probably not as virtuous or as heroic as you think.

We like to think of the Nazis as being extraordinarily evil, but the truth is that they were ordinary people who just happened to live in an extraordinary time and place.

Not unlike the times in which we currently live.

That argument really stuck with me. As the oldest child in my family, I was often told that I needed to set a good example for my younger siblings, and so I grew up thinking of myself as someone who would do the right thing, even if no one else was doing it. The thought that I am the kind of person who would have consented, or even participated, in something as evil as the holocaust was utterly hateful to me. That’s not who I thought I was.

But how could I prove to myself that I was not, in fact, that person? How could I know? I thought about that for a long time—not just about the Nazi thing, but about the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment as well. Was I the kind of person who would blindly follow the rules, no matter how horrific they were? If I wasn’t that person, how would I know?

As I pondered over this question, I began to reframe it. Instead of asking what I would have done if I’d lived in 1930s Germany—a historical counterfactual that is impossible to disprove—I began to wonder if there was anything happening today that future generations will look back on with the same horror and contempt that we look back on the holocaust.

In other words, is there anything happening today that we all blindly take for granted, or that we all just turn our heads away from, but that future generations who are removed from our historical context will look back on and ask “how could you all have gone along with that? How could you possibly be that evil?”

This prompted me to look at the abortion issue in a completely different way. And the more I studied it, the more convicted I became that this is our generation’s equivalent of the holocaust.

In fact, the more I examined our own genocide of the unborn and compared it with the holocaust, the more I came to realize that we may have actually exceeded the evil of the Nazis. Consider this:

The Nazis killed about six million Jews and several hundred thousand (at least) more people from groups such as the Roma, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped etc. But in the time since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the US, we have aborted 65 million children—an order of magnitude more than the victims of the holocaust.

The holocaust didn’t go on much longer than a decade: the Nazis came to power in 1933, and surrendered to the Allies in 1945. But our own genocide of the unborn has been happening for multiple generations now—nearly fifty years.

The holocaust happened in the context of a post-war Germany where the people were shattered and impoverished, and children were literally starving to death in the streets. Our genocide of the unborn has happened during a period of such incredible prosperity that it is unparalleled in human history.

While many of the victims of the Holocaust were innocent children, there were also many adults who perhaps were not so innocent or powerless. But no one is as innocent and powerless as the unborn.

Generally speaking, the Nazis weren’t killing their own family when they sent the Jews off to the death camps. But with abortion, we are slaughtering our own children—our very flesh and blood.

Many women who get abortions are deceived by the pro-abort arguments, and do not believe that they’re committing an evil act. But many of the German people were deceived by the Nazis as well. Is that really a valid excuse?

I won’t go into all of the pro-life arguments. There’s a lot that can be said about Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood’s connection with actual Nazis and other eugenicists (and how that connection still exists), as well as a lot of good arguments—both religious and scientific—about how life begins at conception, and the unborn are as deserving of human rights, including the right to life, as any other living person.

But you’ve probably already heard all those arguments. I doubt there’s much that I can rehash here that will change your mind. I will, however, link to an excellent podcast that does put forward all those arguments, so you can examine them if you’re curious:

With all of that in mind, I came to realize that there is a way to know whether I’m the kind of person who would have been a Nazi, and that involved answering the question:

“What are you doing about the genocide of the unborn?”

Now, I recognize that those who disagree with the pro-life side are not, for the most part, heartless monsters who do not deserve to live. There are a few extraordinarily evil serial killing abortionists out there, but most pro-choicers are genuinely decent folk who happen to see things differently. I get that. The same was probably true of most Germans in the 1930s: they weren’t extraordinarily evil, but ordinary folk like you and me who just happened to be caught up in the mass psychosis of their time.

I do believe that we are witnessing the formation, or perhaps the final expression, of a mass formation psychosis over the abortion issue. With all of the hysteria surrounding Dobbs v. Jackson and the Supreme Court’s decision to return the abortion issue to the states, the left is coalescing around this issue—but they aren’t content with “safe, legal, and rare” anymore. Instead, abortion is now proclaimed as something virtuous, and the women (and “men”) who get abortions as heroes. It’s perverse, deranged, pathological, and evil in the extreme.

So what should we do about that? Take up arms? Punch a Nazi? Go back in time and kill baby Hitler? No. The kind of people who fantasize about such things are also, in the abortion context, the kind of people who bombed abortion clinics in the 80s and 90s, or who send death threats to abortionists and pro-abort activists. All of those actions play right into the pro-aborts’ hands.

But the truth is that the sword cuts two ways. If most of us are the kind of people who would have gone along with the Nazis, then the people who actually did support the Nazis weren’t extraordinarily evil—and neither are most of the people who are going along with abortion. Their evil—our evil—is of the ordinary variety.

And how do we fight ordinary evil? By changing hearts and minds so that it comes to be regarded as extraordinary.

As a writer, I recognize that I’m in a unique position to do that. And it isn’t an accident that in the last few months, my writing (most of it currently unpublished) has taken a very pro-life bent. Not that I’m trying to evangelize a pro-life position—that would be propaganda, not art—but my recent work has a much more pro-life bent to it, and I don’t intend to hide or run away from that.

Not surprisingly, I haven’t been able to find a home for these stories in the traditional sci-fi magazines and anthologies. And at this point, I’m assuming that many of these editors have put me on some sort of author black list for my pro-life themes—in fact, I’d be surprised if none of them had.

But no matter. This is what rings true to me, and it would be an artistic betrayal to self-censor my pro-life sensibilities at this point. And that would be just as bad as producing mere propaganda.

In the next few months, I plan to self-publish several stories that have been influenced by my pro-life views, assuming that they don’t get picked up by a magazine or anthology first. The first one is “The Freedom of Second Chances,” scheduled for December, and another one, “The Body Tax,” is scheduled for January.

Beyond that, I don’t have anything specific planned, but I’m sure I’ll be writing more unapologetically pro-life stuff moving forward. And of course, there’s still “The Paradox of Choice,” which I’ve released into the public domain in case anyone wants to republish it or rewrite it or otherwise make it their own:

The Paradox of Choice: A Short Story

The Paradox of Choice: A Short Story

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Short Story Singles
Genres: Political, Science Fiction, Short Stories (single author)
Tag: 2019 Release

“In cases where there may be severe deformities… I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

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Steelmanning the pro-aborts

Remember when the wrongfun brigade screamed and shouted and gnashed their teeth that the Sad Puppies were cheating the Hugo Awards through “slate voting,” or whatever the hell they called it? That we were somehow gaming the system to put our racist, sexist, misogynistic, fascist authors (many of whom were non-white, female, and/or flaming libertarians) on the ballot? Well… if you’ve been paying attention to the Dragon Awards, you know by now that those accusations were always flat-out lies, because the wrongfun brigade has been doing exactly the same thing they accused us of doing: cramming the wokest garbage on the Dragon Awards ballot, year after year after year.

It’s a toss-up which book is the worst offender, but so far I think that The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz takes the “worst book ever nominated for a Dragon by the wrongfun brigade” award. Seriously, if I were to write a parody of a book written by a washed-up second-wave feminist desperately trying to stay culturally relevant by proving her woke bona fides, there would not be any substantial difference between that and the actual novel. The villians—I kid you not—are an evil time-traveling brotherhood of men’s rights activists who are trying to rewrite history so that women are enslaved as breeders for the Patriarchy. Thankfully, the righteous sisterhood (er, trans-sister, non-binary… damn, that’s awkward) of uber-feminists thwarts the evil MRAs and defeats them in an epic time travel war. Abortions for all!

Seriously, it is clear from the very first page of this woefully inadequate toilet paper substitute that Newitz has never even attempted to thoughtfully and meaningfully engage with a men’s right’s activist, let alone an actual feminist who engaged meaningfully with them. And that’s what I find so fascinating. There was a time when the left was actually pretty good about engaging their ideological opponents on their own terms, and steel-manning, rather than straw-manning, the opposition’s arguments. Today, the left is totally incapable of that. That’s why all of the books that the wrongfun brigade afflicts upon us read like parodies, and why all of the awards that the wrongfun brigade has taken over are best taken as a list of books to avoid.

But all of this got me to thinking: am I capable of steel-manning the left’s argument on a position with which I vehemently disagree? Can I make their argument for them in a way that would make even the most rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth feminist nod reluctantly and admit: “yes, that is exactly what I believe”?

Let’s find out, shall we?

Since the dawn of time, women have been bound and fettered to their wombs. The ability to give birth, which the right sees as a privilege and a blessing, is actually the source of all the inequality between the sexes, and the reason why women have never been as free or as liberated as men.

Throughout history, men could have sex as often as they wished without any fear of becoming pregnant from the encounter. They might fear getting their female partner pregnant, but they always had the option to walk away. In contrast, women had to be constantly aware of the fact that any sexual encounter—whether wanted or not—could lead to nine months of exquisite physical torture, followed by a bloody birthing experience that often resulted in her death. And even in those cases where the mother survived, she now had a child who would be physically dependent on her for years, and mentally or emotionally dependent on her for decades. All of this could result from even the most innocuous sexual exploration—or a single unwanted rape.

Without reliable birth control—and many traditional religious societies still discourage birth control, same as they have for centuries—even a comfortably married woman could expect to spend the majority of her life bearing and caring for children, whether or not she wanted to. And because this experience was universal to all women, society developed strict gender roles that discouraged women from pursuing an education or a career. How could a woman pursue such things, when so many small children depended on her? In this way, the womb defined a woman’s station in life, and she had very little control or say in the matter. After all, what sort of a wife could deny her husband sex? And what sort of a woman could make a living in a world of men without a husband?

The invention of the birth control pill did a lot to liberate women, but it didn’t do enough. At best, the pill granted women a reprive that allowed them to see what the world might be like if they were no longer bound to their wombs. After all, even the most reliable birth control fails from time to time, especially if you forget to take it (or find it too difficult to obtain).

This is where the issue of abortion comes in. Conservatives like to smear us as being “unscientific” or confused about when life begins, but in truth that is just a side issue—a distraction from the real issue, which is liberating women from their wombs. Because the power to create life isn’t empowering at all if it only goes one way. If you have the power to give, but not to take, that power can be used against you. Same if you have the power to create, but not to destroy.

This is why abortion needs to be both legal and readily available through all stages of pregnancy: because unless women can choose to abort the life within them, then they will never be truly liberated. Nature has given them the power to give life, but without the power to take it, women will always be second-class citizens, confined to the restrictive gender roles imposed on them by their wombs. This is why birth control alone is insufficient: it only blocks the ability to create life, and that imperfectly. But power has to flow both ways.

Conservatives make a lot of noise about the value of life, but they are suspiciously silent on the issue of quality of life. Indeed, they seem to be unable or unwilling to consider that some lives simply are not worth living. Thus, they are willing to make exceptions to their pro-life stance for things like ectopic pregnancies—conditions where the choice is between letting both the mother and the baby die, or killing the baby to save the mother—but they fail to see how the same principle might apply in situations where the woman has to choose between aborting the child to obtain a successful career, or have the child and condemn them both to a life of abject poverty.

Not all life is equal. Some lives are more worth living than others, and some people’s lives are so terrible that they wish they’d never been born. How is it virtuous or noble to give anyone that kind of a life? It isn’t. Abortion is a hard thing, but sometimes it is necessary, and the alternative—the pro-life position—is downright cruel.

But that isn’t the main reason why abortion is so important. The main reason is that it liberates women from the fetters of the womb. It grants them the antithesis to the power that nature grants them, the power to create life, and thus allows them to pursue whatever sort of path they wish. Many women who have abortions go on to have children later in life, when the time is right for them. And because of those abortions, they are better able to care for those children, when they do come.

At this point, we should talk about how men control women’s bodies. Now, it’s obvious that there isn’t some super-secret Patriarchy society that meets on Tuesdays to discuss how they can advance their goal to turn all women into slaves for breeding purposes. That’s not what we mean when we say “controlling women’s bodies.” However, it is natural for people to fear the things that they don’t understand, and to try to exert control over the thing that they fear. Men clearly don’t understand women—that fact has been memed so often, it’s practically self-evident. So is it really all that hard to believe that men often try to exhert control over women, out of their fear and misunderstanding?

This control takes on many forms, but perhaps the most common form is that of gender roles. Men want women to take on a defined role because, among other things, that makes women understandable. But these roles are often more constrictive than the corresponding roles imposed upon men. A “mother” is often subject to a higher standard than a “father,” and is judged much more harshly when she fails to live up to that role. Also, the role of “mother” grants a lot less bodily autonomy than that of “father.” Is it really hard to see how this becomes a mechanism of control—specifically, over women’s bodies?

The issue at the heart of all of this is liberation. Freeing women from the harsh realities imposed upon them by their wombs is just the beginning. The ultimate liberation is the freedom to redefine reality itself—to decide whether or not one actually is a woman, and transcend the restrictions of sex and gender altogether. And why shouldn’t we exercise this power? Since the dawn of time, humans have been creatures of innovation, refusing to accept the constraints that nature has imposed upon us. When we looked up at the birds and saw that they could fly, we didn’t say “that’s nice, but nature didn’t give us that ability, so we should just stay in our place here on Earth.” Rather, we took inspiration from the birds and kept innovating and inventing until we, too, had the ability to fly. Why should sex or gender be any different?

This is why feminism and transgenderism aren’t actually at odds. It’s also why the new “what is a woman?” meme on the right, however cute, is totally irrelevant. Yes, it is true that ever since the dawn of time, a woman has been defined as an adult human female. That isn’t interesting. What is interesting is what women may become, after they’ve been liberated. Or men, for that matter. Because the liberation of women also ultimately liberates all of humanity: male, female, and everything in-between.

Liberation is the goal. Liberation is the key. Accept no boundaries, and refuse to live by the rules that are imposed upon you. Partake of the forbidden fruit, and you too may ascend to godhood. Refuse to accept the stories of Icarus and Prometheus as cautionary tales. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Trump season 6 has officially jumped the shark.

I’m calling it now: Trump season 6 has officially jumped the shark.

The show has been nothing if not a little over the top, but it’s been building steadily enough that even when it strains credulity, there ends up being a good reason for it. Until now, that is.

I’ll admit, when the global pandemic dropped at the beginning of season 4 right in the middle of the first impeachment, it made me wonder if the show had jumped the shark at that time. But the pandemic turned out to be a major turning point that redefined the whole show. It was also necessary to get him out of the White House in the beginning of season 5.

Now that was a bold move, to make him “lose” the election. But it was also quite brilliant, as it was necessary to show that even after he was nominally removed from power, Trump is still the center of gravity for the whole political system. Without him, the Democrats have absolutely nothing, as most of the country hates their policies as well as their hypocritical racism. Only by uniting the base against a common enemy do they have any hope of making it.

Also, it’s been really fascinating the way the writers have turned Biden into a mirror of Trump. Everything that Trump’s enemies have accused him of doing, Biden has actually done. Remember “Grab them by the pussy” from the first season? Yeah, Biden has actually done that. Also, stumbling on the stairs to Air Force One? I’d actually forgotten about that one, since it seemed like just a throwaway moment in season 2. The writers must have had tremendous foresight to set all that up way back then. It’s one of the reasons why this show ranks right up there with Breaking Bad and The Man in the High Castle.

Now, the show almost jumped the shark with the Ukraine-Russia war at the beginning of season 6. But that was actually foreshadowed back in seasons 3 and 4, with the first impeachment proceedings. Also, the very first episode of season 1 alluded to the simmering situation that Obama had left in Crimea and the Donbas after the Maidan protests. It was subtle, but it was there. Besides, with all of the talk about how Trump would start WWIII if he were elected, it was necessary for the writers to get Biden into a hot proxy war with Russia, which may yet prove to be the start of the next world war. Besides, they toned it down a bit by turning it into a WWI-style meatgrinder, rather than immediately jumping to a trans-Atlantic nuclear exchange.

But Biden’s latest speech was just way too over the top. I mean, I know the show’s been setting things up for a civil war sometime in the next few seasons, but the optics of that speech were just way too on point. I could almost hear one of the soldiers off-screen asking “Hans, are we the baddies?” Dark Biden, my ass.

Still, I guess I’ll still keep watching the show, if for no other reason than to find out how the Ukraine war ends. At least that subplot is still interesting, though at the rate things are going, the Chinese invasion of Taiwan will be as ridiculous as the last season of Game of Thrones. So will the civil war, apparently. At this point, they’ve just been drawing it out for way too long.

What about you? Are you still enjoying the show, or do you agree with me that season 6 has really jumped the shark?

Fisking Hysteria

So a couple of days ago, I finished revising “The Freedom of Second Chances” and started looking for places to submit it. That was how I found this anthology call, for a pro-abortion anthology titled Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic: An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction. The guidelines were so unbelievable that I just have to fisk them on this blog. Here we go!

Hysteria

Interesting title for an anthology. I’m sure this will feature only the most thoughtful and enlightening stories that the speculative fiction field currently has to offer.

Irrational.

Okay.

Frenzied.

Uh, okay.

Unreasonable.

Oookay.

Unable to speak their own experiences. 

One of those things is not like the others. One of those things just doesn’t belong.

Seriously, if you are free to be as irrational, frenzied, and unreasonable as you wish, then what exactly is preventing you from being able to “speak [your] own experience”? If you are still free to do this:

…then you are not being silenced by the pro-life crowd.

(As a side note, you would not believe how difficult it was to find that video. YouTube search would not bring it up, no matter how many combinations I tried. Even Brave search mostly brought up music videos and disgusting sex tapes. I had to go to The Comments Section by Brett Cooper, look up the video where she briefly reacted to it, freeze the frame, and scroll through a couple pages of search—not on YouTube, or on Google, or on Duck Duck Go (all of which are “curated” now), but on the Brave browser’s native search engine.

But tell me again how your side is the one that is “unable to speak their own experiences.” I’m sure that’s why this hilarious and eminently meme-able video about a story in the current news cycle has only received 10k views in the four days of its existence, and no mention on Know Your Meme at all. After all, it’s not like conservatives are the ones being censored and shadowbanned.)

In the case of abortion specifically, we have been told for decades in the United States that Roe v. Wade was safe

No, I’m pretty sure that was just something that you people told yourselves.

and that we were overreacting, illogical, needlessly aggressive—hysterical.

Actually, “safe, legal, and rare” was pretty much the majority viewpoint until Trump became president and all of the masks came off. So tell me, was “safe, legal, and rare” a lie from the very beginning?

Now look. We were none of those things. 

Then why is the title of your page literally “Hysteria Submission Call”? Because it seems to me that all of those words—”overreacting,” “illogical,” “needlessly aggressive,” and “hysterical”—describe you people perfectly. As further evidence:

Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic:

It is so wonderfully fitting that the title of your anthology invokes the Marquis de Sade, the man who asked why everyone else’s pain should be more important than his pleasure. After all, why should 60 million dead babies—a death count that would make Hitler blush—be more important than your freedom to have promiscuous, irresponsible sex?

An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction,

I have literally never considered the combination of those two words until I saw them in your anthology call.

which is presented by CHM and will benefit the Chicago Abortion Fund, is seeking dark speculative fiction from anyone directly at risk as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade, defined inclusively. 

But exclusively of, you know, actual women. After all, I noticed that you never mentioned the word “woman” in that sentence. Pretty weird, considering that Roe v. Wade was supposed to be about “a woman’s right to choose.” Or was that always a lie, too?

Guidelines

Genre: Dark speculative, widely defined. Don’t self-reject!  

Oh no, honey. It’s not me that I’m rejecting when I say that you people will never see any of my work. Though I was tempted to troll you by submitting “The Freedom of Second Chances,” since it’s the most pro-life story I’ve written so far in my career. But I decided to fisk your anthology call instead.

Theme: 

Hysteria. 

Interpret the theme broadly. You don’t have to beat me over the head with the connection.

But how can it be “hysteria” if we aren’t beating you over the head? After all, that’s what the Trump years were all about: beating the narrative over all our heads until morale improved.

I am willing to look at everything from retellings of “The Yellow Wallpaper” to sci-fi space opera rockstars. Feel free to take on one of the many faces of the monstrous patriarchy directly.

Isn’t it curious how “the Patriarchy” totally isn’t a crazy conspiracy theory, but the Wuhan lab leak theory, or the efficacy of ivermectin in treating covid, or the reports of alarming menstrual irregularities and increased rates of myocarditis in people who took the covid vaccine all were. But since the pandemic, the difference between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact has been between 4-6 months—except for the truly crazy conspiracy theories, like the idea that the moon landing was a hoax. Or the Patriarchy.

Because if you can’t now, when the heck can you? 

Well, your anthology call is certainly taking this “hysteria” theme seriously. So points for consistency, I guess.

Open To: Anyone directly at risk as a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe v. Wade, defined inclusively

But once again, defined exclusively of actual, you know, women. And by “women,” I mean adult female humans, because those are, you know, the only people who can actually get pregnant (emojis notwithstanding) and therefore, you know, the only people who can actually get abortions.

Seriously, though, it is amazing what sort of knots these people will tie themselves into in order to avoid having to answer the question “what is a woman?”

(Also, this is a knitpick, but it’s worth pointing out that there’s a typo in that sentence, since it ends without a period. Pertinent because the anthology call was supposed to be written by a professional editor.)

Word Count: Maximum 5,000 words, no minimum. 

Reprints: No.

Multiple Submissions: No.

Simultaneous Submissions: Yes! But please alert us immediately if the piece is accepted elsewhere and needs to be withdrawn.

In all fairness, I have to give these people credit for allowing simultaneous submissions. In this era of digital publishing, it is insane for publishers to expect writers to give them exclusivity when deciding whether or not to purchase publishing rights. It’s also inconsiderate, but that was true before digital publishing.

Simultaneous submissions are one of my industry hobby horses. Maybe I’ll write a blog post about that, though it may get me blacklisted from a few of these magazines. Then again, I’ve probably already been blacklisted for writing stories that are pro-life. Remind me how Dobbs v. Jackson makes you “unable to speak [your] own experiences” again? Oh, right.

Pay: 

6 cents/word (USD)

As this is a charity anthology, authors who would like to contribute more and who are safe to do so may waive pay. This is completely optional, and we will never ask you to do this; you can only request it upon acceptance. 

Except you kind of just did ask, in a passive-aggressive sort of way.

Date Open: July 18

Date Closed: August 1

Format: 

Shunn-ish. I don’t need your home address or phone number, we haven’t even met.

The sentiment is mutual.

https://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

No need to stress about the cover letter, but if you are a member of a marginalized community underrepresented in discussions of reproductive justice, feel free to note that if you are comfortable. 

Notice again that they never actually mention the word “woman.” Which is incredible, because in the very act of discussing “marginalized” and “underrepresented” groups, they are literally erasing and marginalizing half of the people on this planet. Never forget: accusation = projection = confession 100% of the time with these people.

Submissions: AsepticAndFaintlySadistic@gmail.com

Please use this format for the subject line of your submission email.

Last Name; Story Title; Word Count

Other Stuff

The Editor Likes:

Forward-thinking,

Translation: pro-trans propaganda that refuses to acknowledge the existence of women.

expertly crafted

Translation: the sort of thing an English major would write.

speculative fiction. Work that uses innovative forms,

Translation: the sort of thing that wouldn’t appeal to people who like fun, entertaining stories. Because that would be wrongfun.

original voices, 

Translation: “We’re looking specifically for a previously unpublished writer who checks all the right intersectional boxes, so that when xe becomes an award-winning darling of the field, we can say that we were the first ones to publish xer.”

broken timelines, 

I actually had to look this one up. Apparently, they want to publish the next “Unknown Number,” because if an artist can duct tape a banana to a wall in a gallery and call it fine art, then a writer who checks all the right intersectional boxes should be able to win the Hugo with a Twitter thread. Or something.

metafiction, 

Translation: post-modern garbage.

etc, but is still legible.

But will you accept my submission if it’s written in crayon?

Think Carmen Maria Machado, Nadia Bulkin, Mona Awad, Rivers Solomon, Angela Carter, Emily M. Danforth, Caitlin R. Kiernan. 

The only one of those writers I’ve actually heard of is Rivers Solomon, and from what I can tell her faer main claim to fame is that she fae checks all the right intersectional boxes.

Absolutely Not: 

TERF-y, gender-essentialist fiction. 

Lest you think I exaggerate when I say that these people want to erase and marginalize women, we have it right here, straight from the horse’s mouth. No trans-exclusionary radical feminist stories, aka anything that defines “woman” as an adult human female, no matter how feminist it might otherwise be.

Trans activists talk big about how everyone who opposes them treats them like they “don’t exist,” but that is exactly what they are doing to women: erasing them. Once again, accusation is ALWAYS projection is ALWAYS confession with these people.

Gratuitous sexual assault, gratuitous violence, and unchallenged -isms and -phobias (body horror welcome). 

I’m not surprised. Abortion is the ultimate body horror.

The Title Comes From: Margaret St. Clair’s fantastic short “Brenda” (Weird Tales 1954). 

Thanks for the tip. I will certainly avoid that one.

Why the Chicago Abortion Fund: It looks like, for the foreseeable future, Illinois is going to be the only state with abortion protections in place serving a very large section of the country.

And by “protections,” of course they mean that there will be no protections in Illinois for the unborn.

Abortion funds are especially critical at this time, as they provide financial assistance to directly cover the costs of abortion. 

Because those abortionists really need their lamborghinis!

The Chicago Abortion Fund provides grants from between $100 to $300 dollars to those seeking abortion services, and they attempt to provide this grant for 100% of the people who contact them. They also provide assistance in locating additional funding, as well as with travel and associated expenses. 

From their website: The mission of the Chicago Abortion Fund is to advance reproductive autonomy and justice for everyone by providing financial, logistical, and emotional support to people seeking abortion services and by building collective power and fostering partnerships for political and cultural change. We envision a world where everyone has the freedom and autonomy to create lives, families, and communities that are healthy, safe, and thriving and where the full range of reproductive choices, including abortion, are accessible and affirmed. 

If these people are truly “pro-choice,” why are they so obsessed with shutting down crisis pregnancy centers? Just look into the crazy eyes of Elizabeth Warren as she talks about it, and then ponder on the fact that dozens of crisis pregnancy centers have been firebombed and vandalized by the left-wing terrorist group Jane’s Revenge in just the past month. Why?

Because the “pro-choice” crowd only really believes in one choice: abortion. But having only one choice means that you have no choices at all, meaning that “pro-choice” is actually a lie. Just like “safe, legal, and rare.” Just like “a woman’s right to…”

Which brings me back around to the most incredible thing about this anthology call: the fact that the words “woman” and “women” do not appear anywhere, even though this is supposedly a pro-abortion anthology. In fact, the anthology call goes out of its way to discourage submissions that are “gender essentialist,” meaning that they affirm the scientific, biological nature of sex. In a pro-abortion anthology call!

It is impossible to satirize these people. They are so possessed by their radical ideology that they satirize themselves without realizing it. In a sane and healthy world, the anthology would be a failure, the publisher would go bankrupt, and the stories themselves would quickly fade into cultural irrelevancy—

—which may happen yet. The cultural tides are turning, and these people are so devoid of self-awareness that they are totally blind to it. That is precisely why the overturning of Roe v. Wade caught them so flat-footed. And instead of responding to this setback with introspection and reflection, they immediately jump to hysteria, not realizing that doing so wins no converts and turns away many who would otherwise be sympathetic.

They are losing.

They are losing HARD.

Moreover, they have no idea how hard they are losing.

In their arrogance, they will fall.

And after they do, future generations of readers will look back in wonder and bewilderment at anthologies like this one that were products of their insane (and interesting) times.

I don’t usually do these fisking articles, but in my efforts to find more traditional markets to send my short stories, I’ve come across some truly insane submission guidelines. Since none of these markets is likely to publish anything by a conservative straight white cisgender Latter-day Saint Christian male such as myself, I don’t see much harm in fisking a couple more of them. What do you guys think?