My Life As A Historian: They Said That After Rome Fell Too

For those following Brian Niemeier's push to re-calibrate generational reckoning and the group psychological profiles thereof, you want to read the following.

The Millennials didn’t grow up in a vacuum. They weren’t born in the cabbage patch, sprouted legs one day, and then “POOF,” 22 years later found themselves $120K in debt with a Master’s degree in Diversity and Inclusion. Like everyone else they were a product of their environment. And a huge part of that environment, if not the most influential part, was the elders who would raise them. Parents, teachers, professors, guidance counselors, therapists, bosses, even politicians and media personalities would directly and indirectly wield incredible, if not total influence over the Millennials and would be the single most determining variable in how the Millennials would turn out.

This is the way it has always been throughout human history because there’s no other way for it to be. Younger generations have to be raised by older generations. But the Millennials were going to be raised by a very unique generation of elders. A generation of elders that the world had never seen before in terms of its wealth, stability, pampering, and privilege. Nor had the world seen such an arrogant, self-important, completely delusional, and completely wrong generation before. And it was this generation that was going to prepare the Millennials for the real world - the Baby Boomers.

What I absolutely love about the Baby Boomers, what I find so incredibly rich is how they were the generation that coined the phrase “Never trust anybody over 30.” And you need to really break down this statement to appreciate how hypocritical, delusional, arrogant, and simply wrong that statement is and therefore how wrong the Baby Boomers are.

First, Boomers said this when they were young. Not only stupid, but inexperienced and young. They were a bunch of teenage, 20 something know-nothings, who never worked a job, had yet to start families, draft-dodged a war, but somehow they thought they knew better than their elders and the culminated eons of human history. Not only is this against common sense, it’s the epitome of hubris and arrogance. Many of them hadn’t even gone to college to have a political religion installed in them so they’d parrot such outlandish stupidity. They were just that naturally stupid and arrogant on their own!

More of that is here.

And yes, the Supreme Dark Lord summarizes succinctly:

It's remotely possible that the Baby Boomers aren't the worse generation in human history. But they certainly did manage to destroy what was once the wealthiest, freest, most powerful nation on Earth. It wasn't entirely their fault; they did not plant the seeds of that destruction. But instead of weeding the garden of those evil shoots, they enthusiastically watered them.

And that is why future generations that never even knew them will hate them. They will not hate the Boomers for the same reasons that Gen-X and Gen-Z hate them, but they will hate them all the same.

Count on it. It wouldn't be the first time that this happened.

Most of you reading this may find that statement a bit of hyperbole. There are places in the world where resentments against the failures of previous generations are very much a thing, and any such post-living-memory resentment against the Boomers will follow that pattern. They won't necessarily call them Boomers, but they will castigate them for despoiling a posterity passed unto them instead of stewarding it as was their duty for the good those after them. (There's that "This life ain't about you" thing again.)

And yes, this is not me talking all academic-like. You'll see this in action in my Star Knight series.

My Life As A Gamer: Laughing At The Death Cult

The SJWs in tabletop RPGs come again at the RPG Pundit.

Confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and God raised Him from the dead.

— Bradford C. Walker (@MrBCWalker) February 19, 2020

That Church Lady preening demanded a Witch Test, so I hit her with one. Results pending, but given the presence of Muh Pronouns in the bio, I'm expecting a positive result.

What makes this hilarious to me is that this witch claims that Pundit is "extremely right-wing" and "shunned".

I am far to Pundit's right. Pundit's a firm adherent to the Enlightenment and modern republican government. Pundit, at most, is center-right and that may be pushing it. He's at the table with his co-hosts on his podcast, a table that would have no problem welcoming Sargon of Akkad (the English YouTuber, not the actual Akkadian ruler, for those of you in the far future reading this), and actual right-wing political philosophy is not his brand of tobacco.

Not that the SJW cares. Her moral preening is as much virtue-signalling to her fellow travelers as it is thought-policing, and--as Brian Niemeier repeatedly points out--that moral preening assume a Christian cultural foundation, and therefore assumes Christianity. The Witch Test is there to compel her to choose between her cult allegiance or the source of her authority.

Being female, and haranguing men, she's going to fail the Test if she doesn't back down and apologize. It won't be hard to tell why.

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. - 1 Timothy 2:12 (KJV)

No one patrols thots like He does.

I know the Pundit's laughing. He knows he has followers and other friendlies who, like me, are far to his right; he knows what right-wing looks like, something this witch couldn't find no matter how big her broomstick is. Praise God for granting Voltaire's prayer in making His enemies foolish before the hammer comes down. If you want to lend ol' Pundit a hand, buy his stuff. This link goes to an Amazon search for his stuff, and this goes to DriveThruRPG.

UPDATE: In a display of hubris-driven honesty, she confessed to being a witch.

My Life As A Writer: Second Star Knight Campaign Coming

I will launch a crowd-funding campaign to finish work on the next two books in April. The following perks will be offered. More may be added.

• Build A Mech (4 slots)
• Build A Ship (4 slots)
• Be In A Book (4 slots)
• Get Killed In A Book (2 slots)

Yes, Brian Niemeier did them first. They work, so why reinvent the wheel? Perks claimed will be applied starting with Book Four, as I have Two and Three well into the works at this point. If you want me to consider other Perks, suggest below. In addition, if you want non-book merch such as posters then now is the time to show me it's worth doing it.

My Life As A Writer: Book Twitter Is Pathetic

I made this observation on Twitter today.

Reading Book Twitter is like looking into a cult's echo chamber. FFS, Amazon is RIGHT THERE. Just put the damned thing up already and stop whining about agents and publishers.

— Bradford C. Walker (@MrBCWalker) February 17, 2020

It's fucking retarded.

The amount of utterly useless bitching, whining, and moaning about OldPub pushing this or that or the other thing on authors--being it agents or publishers--shows that most of them somehow haven't accepted that they don't need either of them anymore to get their books out there and before the buying public. I can only conclude that, for many of them, they are far more concerned with the prestige of OldPub's approval via publication than actually putting out their work before people who want to buy it.

I am not sympathetic at all to them.

And no, BookTube is no better.

Narrative Warfare: The Praxis of Religion

A while back Dragon award winner and multiple time nominee Brian Niemeier wrote a series of posts on the cults afflicting Western Civilization: The Pop Cult, the Death Cult, the Fap Cult, and most recently the Mammon Mob. Using the former two as examples, Brian would explain how a cult works as a religious system.

First, let's define our terms. To qualify as a religion, a group must have three elements:

• Cult: a consistent body of rituals for public worship
• Code: a set of moral rules
• Creed: a canon of shared myths that defines a shared identity

I'll add a further criterion introduced by reader D.J. Schreffler. A religion offers adherents explanations for their past, present, and future.

• The origin story--this is part of the creed.
• Ritual laws for the here and now--see cult and creed above.
• Eschatology--the final chapter of the creed.

To which I will add this: when put into practice, a religion's praxis translates its tenants into a holistic system of governance. A viable religion is one that is self-enforcing and self-sustaining, requiring no external entity for either requirement. It is the cornerstone upon which all institutions of Civilization emerge upon, and without which such institutions hollow-out and collapse.

The Pop Cult fails because it is neither. The Death Cult fails to sustain itself; it is nothing more than a parasite. The Fap Cult and Mammon Mob also fail these tests; Fap mirrors Pop and Mammon mirrors Death.

The reason for these conclusions is simple, and that reason is this: when the cult tenants are imagined to be implemented in an environment where no external pressure exists (ie. a fantasy world), and then external pressures are introduced, they collapse under pressure every single time. The Pop Cult cannot defend itself against any aggressors, the Death Cult cannot sustain losses, the Fap Cult folds faster than Superman on laundry day, and the Mob rolls over like a kicked dog.

The real-world proof is the hostility these cults show towards actual, viable religions. They know they're inferior parasitic cults and resent real religions accordingly, nevermind the true faith, and this hatred seethes out of every institution they've hollowed out and wear as a decomposing skinsuit. It should be no surprise that civilizational collapse comes as a consequence of the presence of such cults and the degeneracy they promote.

And for those in the back, it is exactly this sort of practice--born of decades of being a a tabletop RPG GM and the world-building one routinely engages in--that slowly brought me back from the mire of irreligion.

Narrative Warfare: The First Step In Defeating A Trap Is Knowing It Exists

Dragon award winner and multiple-time nominee Brian Niemeier penned "A Gen Y Tale" and published it on his blog last year. Author David Stewart has turned that short story into what you see below.

This is a story about something Generation Y is very vulnerable to, which is The Nostalgia Trap.

What strikes you most whenever you get Ys to open up and discuss the past is how similar their experiences are--but only when woolgathering about beloved past diversions. For another "better seen, not heard" generation like the Jonesers and the Silents, Gen Y will blab your ear off about 80s and 90s brands.

The megacorps figured this out sometime around 2010. It's no coincidence that was about when Ys' finally found big boy jobs, and they had some extra scratch to spend. The paypigs who declare they're "over" Star Wars one minute only to turn around and reserve tickets to J.J. Abrams' latest fanfic are almost entirely Gen Y.

David and Brian talked about this at some length in this podcast.

A lot of the problems are generational in their root, in that a specific cohort's formative experiences leave marks that cannot be easily recognized and therefore overcome, and until that awareness is achieved and the knowledge internalized no amount of work can get you out of its grasp. You can cope, but like an alcoholic you can fall off the wagon and slip back into its thrall if your mechanism collapses.

This is a Narrative Warfare post. You should be expecting something by now.

Happy Valentine's Day To SF's First Couple

Happy Valentine's Day. May your love thrive through times of trouble as well as times of peace, just like the First Couple of Science Fiction: John Carter and Dejah Thoris.

And if you somehow don't have a copy of A Princess of Mars, shame on you! It's in the public domain, so you can get it free on Kindle at Amazon (and epub elsewhere, I assume) and print copies are not hard to find.