Manufactured Outrage vs Worthy Opposition

The last few days everyone in Hugo-ville has been in a tizzy about Lou Antonelli contacting the police in Spokane. I’ve seen it referred to as a SWATing. Guys… no. Chill the fuck out. A SWATing is when the SWAT team actually breaks into your house. It’s terrible for a number of reasons, but primary among them the fact that American police are notoriously reckless and an innocent person could be killed. This is a SWATing. What Lou did isn’t SWATing. He wrote a letter, asking for extra police protection at a public event.

Yes, he’s crazy, and he used paranoid language that shows how off-the-deep-end he is. But police do occasionally get such letters from crazy people, it’s not a big deal. And let’s be real for a second – wouldn’t we all feel a bit better with extra security around this year? I’ve heard similar worries from the non-Puppies (called Happy Hippogriffs from here on out for brevity) – they’re also scared that the Puppies fans are dangerously emotional and a few lunatics on the fringe might try to start trouble. I’ve had this expressed to me in private, and seen it online as well. We’re all a bit nervous. Lou just had the misfortune of letting his fear show in public, and targeting the Master of Ceremonies with lunatic accusations while doing so. Cut the guy some slack.

Everyone is quoting the Aug 1 episode of the Superlative Livestream. This is a roundtable discussion by a number of Puppies & Sympathizers, and I think very few people have actually listened to it, because there’s some far more interesting stuff in there! I’ve now listened to it, so you don’t have to. ;) Here’s some highlights.

At ~27:40 someone complains about how many people “shelled out forty bucks just to vote a spoiler vote”, which at first I thought showed crazy amounts of obliviousness. The entire Puppy movement is just one big backlash of the aggrieved, uniting to shell out forty bucks for the satisfaction of casting a spoiler vote! That is their raison d'etre! And now they’re trying to take the moral high-ground, saying that’s dirty pool? Then I realized it was John C Wright talking, and I laughed. The man knows exactly what he’s doing, he just has more chutzpah than anyone currently writing. :)

An interesting insight into the Puppies’ view of us: at ~1:17:25 one complains that “the thing with a lot of these people is that they don’t know people of faith”. Which… wow. Is the problem really that the Puppy voters simply don’t know any Hippogriffs? How else could you imagine that the Hippogriffs don’t know any people of faith? A large portion of them are people of faith! Of the remainder, I guarantee close to 100% know people of faith. We live in America, the most religious first-world country on the planet. It’s nigh impossible to NOT know someone of faith. We are all very much acquainted with people of faith, and the fact that you think we aren’t makes me suspect you’ve been being told some very interesting stories about us.

He then goes on to say that this makes having a chaplain protagonist “non-PC.” I don’t understand how this follows, even in the abstract. If any Puppy is reading this, and agrees with his sentiment, can you clarify what he means?

The same Puppy at ~1:20:15 says that he lives in Texas where they “are very different” because “you don’t have to apologize if you mention God or you say “God-bless-you” when someone sneezes”. Again, I want to know where the hell he’s getting his opinions about the outside world. Generally, mentioning God is not something anyone apologizes for. I mean sure,  it may be considered rude to start arguing Religion and/or Politics depending on the situation, but that’s normal social convention. There’s an old saying about it. That’s just not starting shit at the dinner table. Simply mentioning your God is never something I’ve seen anyone have to apologize for – more often than not it meets with approval.

But seriously, the BIG kicker here is his assertion that anywhere in the US someone would have to apologize for saying “God-bless-you.” That’s ludicrous, to the point that I wouldn’t have believed a Puppy had made that claim if I hadn’t heard it with my own ears. It doesn’t even have religious connotations anymore! That he thinks there are places where you’d have to apologize for saying that means his view of people who are outside his group has been so twisted and distorted that we must be little more than baby-eating mutants! He feels that his in-group is so persecuted outside of his enclave, that the outside world would turn on him for a simple wish of health after a sneeze! NO WONDER the Puppies are so happy to part with $40 to spoil the award party of the enemy side! They have a conception of us as truly awful people. This is the thing I was talking about in Defense Against The Dark Arts. What kind of person thinks it’s ok to distort the worldview of those who respect his opinion to turn them on their fellow citizens in this way? Ugh.

Which brings me to John C Wright. I kinda love this guy. He’s extremely intelligent, and well-spoken, and he has this wonderful, rich voice. He’d make such an amazing Quirrell. And he is *passionate*, which I really admire. I loved it when he was crazy Libertarian, and I still love it now that he’s crazy Catholic. This guy does not give one fuck about what his opposition thinks, because they are wrong. He’s a dyed-in-the-wool Warrior, and he’s amazing to watch. Have I mentioned that I like to watch that kind of thing? I loved reading PZ Myer’s blog for the same reason. Intelligent, passionate, and a warrior. PZ would be what the Puppies call a “Social Justice Warrior” (SJW). John C Wright is the right-wing equivalent. He is absolutely a Conservative Justice Warrior (CJW?), and his fiction screams it. Hell, HE screams it, he doesn’t hide it for a second. He starts off the livestream acknowledging it! But the real fireworks come near the end, and for some reason I haven’t seen it referenced anywhere else.

Starting at ~1:18:00 John Wright says that “they’re an enemy religion to our religion. They know it.” Followed at ~1:18:45 with “They worship Moloch by means of abortion, and they worship Baphomet by means of sodomy.” He’s obviously talking in metaphor, but damn, that is some awesome metaphoring! That’s straight-up biblical. And it’s refreshingly honest. None of this namby-pamby bullshit about “You can say God-bless-you without apologizing for it.” Jesus, that argument is just plain sad, it crumbles as soon as anyone bothers to spend five freakin’ minutes with the opposition. But the claims that we support access to abortion, and we’re cool with sodomy? Entirely true. You think those things are bad, we don’t. That’s something real. That’s something worth engaging. Huzzah to Wright, for cutting past the bullshit and getting right to the beating heart of the divide. You, sir, have my respect. In the odd way that one respects a strong opponent.