More on Hugo-gate

[shadowkat]

So, I've been scanning articles across the net on Hugo-Gate or PuppyGate. (aka when a right-wing faction of blow-hards and whining men with 12 year old brains, decided to hijack the premiere award for Sci-Fantasy, mainly because they hadn't won any, but were making it political.)

It is hilarious. Brad Torgensen, head of the Sad Puppy brigade is attempting to distance himself from Vox Day (who is apparently from Finland and was an instigator of Gamergate and rather, ahem, extreme in his views). Torgensen writes in a blog post that he and his other Sad Puppy co-hort, are sort of like FDR and Churchill who had to get into bed with Stalin to win a political war. But you shouldn't hold it against them. No really.
LOL! Uh, no, more like Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan in bed with Hitler. And, oh, the conservative papers are supporting them. EW got kicked for calling them misogynistic and racist. (No, more sexist and homophobic...at least initially, unfortunately many of their followers are racist and misogynistic, as is Vox Day.) The conservatives say they are merely following in the tradition of Heinlein (really not, I know I read Heinlein),
and this is a war between the libertarians (Heinlein) and toltarianism (HG Wells--again not really, I've read Wells. Wells hated Toltarianism.) But irony and satire are clearly lost on these people. They think literally. Throw a metaphor at them and they'd duck. Makes it very easy for me to make fun of them though.

I remember an ultra conservative aka libertarian in law school...we had gotten into a debate over whether there should be left-turn signals. He was adamantly against them. To be fair, he lived in Western Kansas -there really isn't much need for them out there.

So, when people tell me they are libertarians...my immediate response is..."yes, I know, you don't believe in left hand turn signals. Good luck with that."

Comments

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he lived in Western Kansas

I remember being in a town in far western Kansas. I was looking for something and soon realized I had turned the wrong way. There were no side streets to turn back on, but there were giant no-U-turn signs every few feet. So I drove the extra long block to the edge of town. and made my U-turn outside the limits. ;o)

I know why the signs were there. My grandfather lived in central Kansas and every Friday and Saturday night there was a constant parade of all the teenagers in that part of the county in their cars up and down the town's main street till whenever curfew hit. There was absolutely no place in that little town where they could have seen a movie or bought a pizza, a burger or a shake after dark, so driving up and down was all they had. The town in western Kansas was a little larger and had a few restaurants, but clearly had the same problems.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hee. They also rode around town shooting guns at the local wildlife, not that there's much of it. (I met a guy in college who told me he used to do this.) And tipping cows over. (Apparently that wasn't made up by television.)

Delightful state, Kansas. Sort of weird. It's allegedly libertarian, but still has some absurd liquor laws on the books -- left over from prohibtion. It was a dry state - long after alcohol was legal.