A Sad Thing

Let's talk philosophy.

But only a little and only bouncing a bit on the surface.

Throughout most of human history, we have operated under this idea of "might makes right." We can talk about the concept from a number of angles, but they all come down to the ability of a person or group to silence his/their opponent(s). Often by death: combat, war, whatever. The stronger person/group then gets to set the rules, the "right."

Frequently, we (as a race) have used "God" as our justification. "I won because God was with me; therefore, I must be right." "God" wouldn't side with a loser, right?

Only, through the lens of history, something previous eras have not had to the extent we have today, we can see that that is, in fact, not true. Or, actually, we can see that "God" certainly wasn't on the side of the winners since they were clearly in the wrong (unless "God" is an immoral capricious bastard). These things we can see even today as the bully beats up the kid in the bathroom and stuffs his face in a toilet. He doesn't have any god on his side; he's just stronger and can, therefore, enforce his injustices on those weaker than himself. Or a group (the Republicans) can make it inordinately difficult for another group (African Americans/minorities) to vote thereby throwing an election in their favor.

And since this is a blog post, I'm not going to run through all of the historical examples of this faulty logic. Might doesn't make you right, but it might just make you an asshole.

As an aside, "might" is the root of racism.
But I digress...

Of course, in our "modern American society," we tend to frown on violence being used as a way to assert might (which is not necessarily so in other parts of the world). Instead, in the US, we tend to use wealth and, well, shouting. Shouting the loudest is our current iteration of beating someone up or challenging someone to a duel. It's this "yelling the loudest" thing I want to focus on.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this "off the cuff" from personal observations and what I already know about psychology (which is a lot considering I have a degree in it). I'm not citing sources, so, if you don't trust what I'm saying, do your own research. (Which is probably a good thing, all things considered.)

One thing that is known about people is that they tend to follow a show of force, which is why bullies tend to gather followers and why gangs attract people. There are too many reasons why to get into that, right now, but you can probably accept that as true. Another thing that is known is that what is true/factual is not of great importance to most people. People want more to follow someone who can "prove" they are right rather than working out what is right on their own. People, unfortunately, don't want to do that much thinking for themselves and most people are perfectly fine with being told what and how to think. Not that they even realize that that is what they are doing.
[The proliferation of fake news, right now, is a good example of people being willing to believe whatever is put in front of them and also an example of the type of people susceptible to it (those on the Right have been shown to be MUCH more susceptible to believing fabricated stories than those on the Left).]

What this comes down to is the person who can yell the loudest being declared the victor even if, maybe especially if, what the person is yelling is false. From experience, people with facts tend to be quieter people. They tend to be the thinkers. And they tend to erroneously believe "the facts will speak for themselves." The facts almost always speak too late or, rather, are listened to too late. Your opinion is only as strong as my fact until your opinion actually runs up against my fact and is crushed by it.

In fact, I think wrong people tend to yell all the more loudly because they know they know they have no facts or truth but want to assert themselves anyway. Having grown up in a household with a father exactly like this (to the point of yelling at me about text books being wrong because he was right because he said so godamnit!), I'm pretty good at recognizing this behavior, and Trump is exactly the same kind of personality.

So, yeah, thanks climate deniers. In four years when the climate is destroyed by Trump and his cronies, you'll know just exactly how strong your opinion was.

The one thing this election proved is that Trump is a blowhard. He relied upon bellowing loudly that he was right without ever having any facts to prove it and, the sad thing is, people swarmed to him. Yes, he proved that he has "might," that he can yell loudly. That he could yell more loudly than Clinton who mostly relied upon statistics and facts and experience, all concrete things that she believed would speak for her.

At this point, you might be saying, "But Clinton won the popular vote," which is true, she did, but she didn't win the EC because Trump cowed so many people into not voting by yelling so loudly about what a horrible person Clinton is. When half of the country doesn't bother to even make a showing, something is horribly wrong.

You know, we like to think we are all enlightened these days. That we are smarter than people of the past. But that is demonstrably not the case. Our technology and progress are not due to "people" but to select individuals who have been building on facts and truths over a long period of time. Quiet people. Thinkers. People who were, in their own times, frequently drowned out by people shouting over them.

"People" are a sad thing. Lemmings. Because Trump is certainly going to lead everyone off the edge of a cliff and, well, most people are not just going to follow willingly but delightfully. The problem is that the people who don't want to follow, people who see Trump for what he is, a bloated sack of flatulence, are going to get dragged off of the edge of the cliff, too. And, well, because it's America, we could actually drag the whole world with us.

[Yes, I know a lot of you are rolling your eyes, right now, and think I'm being "a bit extreme," but I will have another post soon on why this is not extreme but, actually, a clear and present danger.]

Do You Know the Code?

Briane Pagel has a new book out. He says it's the best book he's ever written and, seeing that I have quite liked his other books (except for that pineapple thing), at least the ones I've read, I'm really hoping for good things from this one. I've already picked it up but, with the end of the school year and everything going on with my kids, I haven't had a chance to start reading it. I'll let you know what I think as soon as I do, though.

Until then, here's Briane to talk about Codes!

Wherein I Hate Stuff For No Reason (a guest post by Briane Pagel)

I know this is the space Andrew has lately been reserving for his discussion of how to handle, or not handle, a bad (or, as it was, not-really-so-bad) review, and I think that’s important work. Someone has to stand up to bullies, and Andrew has a good platform from which to do so. That’s why I am extra-appreciative of his willingness to lend me his Wednesday slot in order to let me provide some thinly-veiled marketing in the guise of a LISTICLE!

P.S. WHY does everything on the internet have such a stupid name? Years into it, I still cannot bring myself to say that I tweeted something. I tell people “Oh yeah I posted a link to that on Twitter.” “Blog,” “Tweet,” “listicle,” etc. etc. It’s so degrading. I feel stupid whenever I talk about anything I do on the internet. People will say Are you going to try to publicize your book and I have to say Yes, I plan to… *sigh*… blog… about it.

Where was I? Oh, right: Listicle. People love lists! That was one of the things mentioned in an article I read entitled, “These 5 Amazing Things People Love About The Internet Will Change Your Life.” (Other things included cats and lists about cats.) So I’ve been making the rounds, promoting my new book, Codes, and it just made sense. What better way to discuss a near-future book about a corporation trying to perfect the process of human cloning by implanting computer-programmed personalities into them and marketing the result than to create a superficial list designed to generate fake controversy?

Did that sentence make any sense? It’s been a long day and I got lost in some of the clauses there.

Knowing that Andrew usually uses this space to discuss people’s reactions to bad reviews, I decided that the theme for my latest list would at least tangentially relate to that topic, and so I came up with the idea of reviewing shows and books I’ve never even seen, and, of course, panning them.

If you’re like me (and I pray you’re not. TAKE MY WORD FOR IT) then there are LOTS and LOTS of things you HATE, almost-sight-unseen. I am a champion at hating stuff before I know anything about it. I can dislike something practically before I know it exists. It’s a talent. Books, movies, TV shows, songs, certain shades of green… doesn’t matter what it is, I can hate it right up front. And, more than just hate quietly, I can -- based on that completely uninformed opinion review the bejeebers out of that thing I hate. YES! FREE SPEECH! ‘MERICA! Let’s get to it!

1. The Walking Dead: I have never seen this show, or even a preview for it. That has not stopped me from hating it so much that I have started disliking other shows if a commercial for TWD airs during them. Can we NOT have any more allegories about our society told through the zombie format? This thing is all over! I can’t go onto a web page without seeing some picture of a sweaty guy or girl holding a machete and looking fierce next to a headline about how TWD is really going to amazeballs you with the storyline this week. LET ME GUESS: They nearly get overrun by zombies but then hack their way out! Also, where is everyone getting these machetes in the first place? I am 46 years old and I have never seen a machete in real life. Do the zombies bring them? Do they sell them at the True Value ™ Hardware Store? In real life, a zombie apocalypse would feature 100% fewer machetes and 100% more “Dads holding a bed lamp they grabbed off the table.”

2. The New Star Trek Movies: This automatic-dislike probably began when they cast Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in the first “new” Star Trek movie. Looking at Chris Pine gives me the same feeling I get when I grind my teeth, only less pleasant. That was bad enough. But then I heard that in one of these movies they had Kirk driving around in a hot rod on Earth. You know what space operas don’t need? Drag races on planet Earth. But to top it off, they remade “The Wrath Of Khan.” YOU CANNOT REMAKE THE WRATH OF KHAN. That is like remaking a rainbow. Like remaking a glorious, rage-filled, fist-shaking, Enterprise-attacking, earwig-monster-injecting, desert-planet-inhabiting, Fantasy-Island-operating rainbow.

3. The Hunger Games. OH. MY. GOD. From the moment I first heard of this series of books I thought they sounded like the dumbest thing ever. Here is my understanding of the plot: some government starves all its citizens, so that they will send a bunch of kids to shoot each other with arrows in order to get a little bit of extra food. HOW DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? How would that system work? It could never! But then after all the kids shoot each other or whatever, the two (?) winners (?) get elected to the government or something, like Charlie winning the chocolate factory only Jennifer Lawrence didn’t even have to give back the gobstopper? NO DO NOT BOTHER EXPLAINING WHERE I GOT IT WRONG. The plot doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to, because it’s a book for teenagers, and teenagers love it when things don’t make sense. It lets them be convinced that adults don’t ‘understand’ them. That’s why I loved The Cure when I was seventeen, and why kids nowadays love The Hunger Games and its sequels, New Moon and whatever the third one was with Percy Jackson.

3a.Bonus hatred: I cannot stand Jennifer Lawrence. Not even a little bit. She is somehow the female version of that guy in 8^th grade who thought smelling farts was funny. Associating her with a movie makes me that much less likely to see it. If “J-Law” showed up on my doorstep with a giant pizza and a bootleg director’s cut of the next Star Wars movie, I wouldn’t even answer the door.

Let’s do one more. This is fun! How about:

4. Anything by Isaac Asimov. To be honest, I am not sure where this one comes from because I do not know really anything about Asimov other than I dislike him and everything I imagine he stands for. I know as a scifi-ish writer myself I am supposed to apparently love Isaac Asimov and everyone’s always talking about how he predicted the future and his laws of robotics and etc blah blah blah, but I can’t be bothered. I’m not even sure what Asimov is supposed to have written. Foundation, I think? I’d go look it up but I’d rather my browser not have a history of searching for Asimov stuff. Even I am cooler than that. I think Asimov wrote that story that got made into I, Robot, starring Will Smith, and can we as a society really take an author seriously anymore if Will Smith likes his stuff? I’m also pretty sure that in reality there’d be no way robots could be programmed not to harm humans, which I think was a ‘law’ of robotics Asimov pulled out of thin air and made people believe was a thing. It’s so dumb: suppose I was being held hostage by Chris Pine and Jennifer Lawrence and the only way I’m getting out alive is if C-3PO (do NOT get me started on R2-D2!) snipes them both with a laser rifle from across the road. OH WAIT there’s a LAW that he can’t kill them, only if he DOESN’T, then he’s harming a human by letting me die, right? That is NOT how laws work, Isaac Asimov. You don’t see gravity only holding people down if it’s nonparadoxical.

In closing, you’ll note that the only people I picked on in here are people who are dead, or who don’t matter, or who are Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pine and so deserve it. I don’t have to worry about anyone overreacting or calling me crazy or taking me to task for these entirely unfounded and ill-informed, and yet still 100% correct, opinions. Don’t forget to mention in the comments how much you agree with me!

Something I don’t hate: My book, Codes: Robbie had an ordinary life, until she walked into Gravity Sling. Now he’s seeing coded messages everywhere, being chased by shadowy big-corporation goons, and questioning literally everything about the world as he knows it. Some questions need answers. This Phillip K. Dick style debut science fiction novel raises questions about how people use technology and each other.

Links:

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianePagel

My blog: Thinking The Lions: http://www.thinkingthelions.com

Buy Codes on

Golden Fleece Press’ site: http://goldenfleecepress.com/catalog/fiction/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Codes-Briane-Pagel/dp/1942195109

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/codes-briane-pagel/1121816078?ean=9781942195115

The Weekly (Pat) Report #1

Well... Here we are! Another week in the saga of the Revenge of the Fake Reviews! You're probably all tired of hearing about it by now; I know I'm tired of talking about it. BUT, if you want things to be righted, you can't stop talking about it, because that's the same as saying, "What you did is okay, and I'm going to let you get away with it." Dilloway has already been implying that he wants me to stop talking about the things he's done and his patterns of behavior, and I will... just as soon as he has his sister take down all the fake reviews/ratings she has up for me. Which are also on goodreads, now, because Dilloway can't stop himself from escalating the situation even as he's talking about how I should stop talking about him.

So... Let's review the situation, shall we?

1. I wrote a review of a book not written by Pat Dilloway.
2. Pat Dilloway freaked out and had a hissy fit because the author of the book was a friend of his.
3. As a result of his hissy fit, he attacked my review in each place it was posted.
4. He also, in a attempt to "give me a taste of my own medicine," lowered the rating of a book of mine, "Tiberius," which he had previously reviewed and rated four stars, to one star.
5. Pat tried to extort me to change my review of the other book by offering to change his rating on "Tiberius" back to what he originally gave it. Not one to be extorted, I said no, but that whole exchange made me angry. This is not a "hey, I'll lie for you if you'll lie for me" kind of thing.
6. Then, he wrote a post on the IWM blog about what a horrible person I am and accused me of being someone who just goes around giving out 1-star ratings, basically, because I feel like it and because I like being mean to people.
7. At that point, I wrote a post explaining, again, my stance on honest reviews. This post had nothing in and of itself to do with Pat Dilloway, although he took exception to it just as he did the first time I stated my stance years ago. Also, Briane Pagel wrote a post about honesty in reviews which he posted on the IWM blog in no small part because Pat's view that reviews should be biased toward the author for indie books (although he does not practice his own stated stance and will freely give negative reviews to people he doesn't like or to whom he views as a threat or competition) is not a reflection of the views of IWM.
8. Pat expanded his attack on me to include Briane and 1-starred at least one of Briane's books in response to Briane's post about reviews.
9. I wrote a post about the childish behavior of Pat Dilloway with the idea that the way you deal with bullying behavior is to bring it to light. The bully wins if you keep it hidden, and it allows the bully to keep doing it and do it to other people.
10. Pat began harassing me and calling me names in the comments section on my blog (he had also been doing the same to me on goodreads).
11. I published a review of a book of his which I had previously withheld. I see, now, that withholding the review in the first place was a mistake but, at the time, I had not wanted to get into it with Dilloway, because I already knew how he reacted to bad reviews. The review was not revenge, as he seems to think, but was to make a point, again, about the types of reviews that I do, i.e. reviews with objective reasoning based on the product which have nothing to do with how I may feel about the author.
12. Dilloway, of course, attacked the review. Another reviewer pointed out some of the things that I was talking about in the review, things Dilloway said didn't exist, and Dilloway attacked him, too. The other reviewer posted his own review of Dilloway's book because his comments somehow mysteriously vanished from the comment thread on Amazon, and Dilloway attacked that review, too, though most of Dilloway's comments were removed by Amazon.
13. Dilloway began spamming my comment sections on my posts with hundreds of comments calling me names. Yes, I said hundreds. These comments I just ignored and stored, but Dilloway, then, went out of his way to also call various of my commenters names and, actually, called all of my commenters stupid.
14. Because of Dilloway's "I didn't do that, oh, I did do that but it's okay" attitude and his similarity to Vox Day along with his persistence in spamming my comments, I wrote the Sad Puppy post.
15. Dilloway asked for people to help teach me a lesson (on Facebook (I saw the post but don't remember the exact language he used)), and his sister went over to Amazon and began 1-starring all of my books. Later, his other sister also 1-starred the same books that Dilloway had 1-starred.
16. Dilloway wrote another post about what a horrible person I am and how I am just petty dictator for removing all of his comments which were full of nothing more than calling people names and insulting people. Sorry, it's my blog and, if insulting people is the best you have, I don't need that on my blog.
17. Amazon stepped in and removed all of the Dilloway siblings reviews/ratings on "Tiberius" and The House on the Corner. Dilloway re-posted his reviews, both with 3-star ratings, just to have Amazon remove them again. That happened several times (at least three), but Dilloway was persistent in re-posting the reviews every time Amazon removed them. They currently stand with 3-star ratings. Neither sister replaced their reviews on those books, but the first sister still has six 1-star ratings of my work on Amazon.
18. Dilloway began spreading around, in order to show how horrible I am, that I am currently in a feud with my church. That's a very interesting thing since, currently, I do not attend church nor have I in years. I'm assuming that Dilloway is referring to the series I've been doing about racism, and I am going to be generous and assume that his misunderstanding came from a lack of being able to read closely rather than that he is siding with the batch of racist assholes I was talking about in those posts.
Oh, wait, he could have just been purposefully lying about me so as to discredit me. Hmm... yeah, let's go with that option. Occam's Razor and all of that.
19. His sister expanded her rating attack to goodreads where she has currently given me more than 50 1-star ratings (because each piece of the Shadow Spinner serialization is still listed there).

This is the point at which I'm saying that I am not going to quit talking about Pat Dilloway and what he has done and is doing until he fixes it. Not just his reviews (he also went and downrated everything he'd rated of mine on goodreads), because he's changed those so that he can, I suppose, say, "Hey, look, I don't have any bad reviews of his works," but his sister's, too, since, ultimately, he is responsible for those being there. Also, if I see that he's doing this kind of thing to anyone else, I will do my best to let people know about that, too. Because, you know what? Bullies don't get to win.

And, now, for my favorite one!

20. Just this week, Dilloway has published a post saying how much he hates me and how, also, he's sure that everyone believes he's an asshole but, really, what he's doing is okay because he keeps it isolated to "out-of-the-way message boards and blogs." At least he's not putting it in a book that's for sale on, say, Amazon where thousands of people could see it.

The logic here is amazing to me. It's kind of like saying, "Hey, I know I hit you in the back of the head with this board, but at least I did it in this alley where no one could see instead of out on the street." Or, "I know I stole $100.00 from you, but at least I didn't steal $1000.00." It is not the magnitude of something that makes it wrong. The thing is wrong or it's not. Speeding is still against the law even if there are no cops around to catch you.

He also states in the that post that he has been involved in "many a flame war," which I also find interesting considering his stance that I am the problem. I suppose that this could be considered a flame war except that I have kept all of my talk (except for one stray comment) restricted to my blog and have also restricted my talk to only pointing out actual actions without resorting to calling names and insulting anyone's intelligence. At any rate, I think the person who has an issue with getting involved in flame wars should take a look at his behavior.

So that's the update. Next week's will be restricted to only new developments, but I wanted to get the sequence of events down here at the outset. I think I covered everything, at any rate.

If you would like to find out what you can do to help fight the bullies who attack and/or intimidate authors like this just because they can, please feel free to email me.