Posted on 04/08/2015 6:43:22 AM PDT by Salgak
This is the era in which we are all being drafted in the Culture War. It doesn’t matter if you’re secular or religious, political or apolitical, frat boys or geeks, hipsters or bros. Nobody gets to be neutral or sit on the sidelines, because we’ll all be expected to make our obeisance to the latest politically correct opinion handed down to us by a Twitter mob.
By now, we know the basic ingredients of a typical skirmish in Culture War 4.0. It goes something like this: a) a leftist claque starts loudly pushing the “correct” Culture War position onto b) a field previously considered fun, innocuous, apolitical, purely personal, or recreational, and c) accusing anyone who opposes them of being a racist, sexist, bigot who relies on oppressive “privilege” to push everyone else down, while these claims are d) backed up by a biased press that swallows the line of attack uncritically and repeats it.
Any of that sound familiar? It’s just daily life for anyone on the Right, and it’s slowly becoming daily life for everybody else. Ask Comet Guy.
The innocuous field in which the personal is suddenly discovered to be very political might be fashion, music, toys, sports, or sex, not to mention weddings, flowers, cake-baking, and pizza.
Or video games. Or science fiction.
Which explains the latest, wide new front of the Great Social Justice War: Gamergate and its latest outgrowth, the battle over the Hugo Awards, a prestigious annual fiction award for science fiction and fantasy writers.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Disclosure: I am a Sad Puppies Supporter, and have been since Sad Puppies 1, three years ago. . .
If one pinko professor in each state were to disappear every month...
If one pinko professor in each state were to disappear every month...
Only one?
I’ve been watching this one coming and oh man, it’s going to be fun...
Well written article with excellent points. Go Sad Puppies!
In short, this is the one area where our side is winning the Culture War and making some headway at beating back the left’s politicization of every aspect of life.
The techniques of 'fighting back' against 'those who have problems with elections because they don't know the outcomes' needs to be woven into story lines. Science fiction writers work within that tradition... lead lost culture war troops....
“People always have the kind of government they want. When they want change, they must change it.” ― A.E. van Vogt, The Weapon Shops of Isher
Yep. I remember one of my English Professors telling the class that “All art must support the revolution”. This was in the 1970s in Middle America. I asked him about Bach and Shakespeare. He told me “They weren’t artists”.
Or Pablo Picasso etc... good grief
So according to that professor all art must resemble the dreck from Stalinist Russia or the Cultural Devolution?
The left is insane as always
Liberals ruin everything. Instead of rewarding those considered to be the best they give empty awards to those that did not deserve them.
Easiest way to solve this is to ignore them. Anything cultural that can go national, keep at the local level. That’s where we are strongest. We have a better grassroots.
I’m glad to see John C. Wright get some nominations. A very good writer indeed and unafraid to say what almost every public type person is afraid to say in today’s cultural climate. His blog is great, interesting stuff ranging from science, sci-fi and politics and morality.
http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/04/
Freegards
“When I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great sense of the term. Giotto, Titan, Rembrandt and Goya were great painters.
I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and has exhausted, as best he could, the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere.”-Pablo Picasso
I’ve been following this one as well. Literary awards and generally publishing itself are very vulnerable to organized takeovers by people pushing an agenda, and SF is no exception. I had a brief conversation in a bookstore with a young lady who was very open about forcing the awards to women and minorities “to make up for past oppression.” She challenged me to name a single female SF author and when I named five, the conversation was over.
I actually have a friend on Facebook who years ago won a Hugo. I’m not following her since she and her other friends post dozens of cat videos per day but I went and looked at her wall and she is still just posting cats and other stuff and no political stuff so I think I will respect her space and not copy her on this.
All of which really goes to show why the Hugo isn’t actually that prestigious. I mean everybody likes getting awards, but anything voted on by the people, especially a self selecting group of people with no real claim to anything, isn’t that big a deal. I know a World Con attendee, she votes every year, which is generally preceded by getting voting ideas from her friends since nobody manages to read all the nominees every year.
I suppose competing vote riggings can be kind of entertaining, but it certainly doesn’t help the value of the award.
Yep. We read Brecht. He should have been jailed for torture.
I think ultimately we all devolve to cat videos every day sooner or later, kinda like how we are destined to someday return to base molecules, and the Universe.
Have fun, annoy a Social Justice Weenie!
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