The Vicious Among Us

     Apologies in advance for this one, Gentle Reader. It’s a few minutes after one AM as I write this. I can’t sleep and am cranky from chronic pain, conditions that are seldom conducive to good reasoning or finely wrought prose. But after reading this cri de coeur from Sarah Hoyt, which I commend to you in its entirety, I simply must vent a bit.

     The great problem with many of the most important descriptive terms in any language is that their meaning can only be illustrated: i.e., made plain by example. This is particularly the case with characterological words. Consider this collection of definitions for the word vicious:

Vicious \Vi"cious\, a. [OF. vicious, F. vicieux, fr. L. vitiosus, fr. vitium vice. See Vice a fault.]
1. Characterized by vice or defects; defective; faulty; imperfect.
[1913 Webster]

2. Addicted to vice; corrupt in principles or conduct; depraved; wicked; as, vicious children; vicious examples; vicious conduct.
[1913 Webster]

3. Wanting purity; foul; bad; noxious; as, vicious air, water, etc. --Dryden.
[1913 Webster]

4. Not correct or pure; corrupt; as, vicious language; vicious idioms.
[1913 Webster]

5. Not well tamed or broken; given to bad tricks; unruly; refractory; as, a vicious horse.
[1913 Webster]

6. Bitter; spiteful; malignant. [Colloq.]
[1913 Webster]

Syn: Corrupt; faulty; wicked; depraved.

     You might think there’s useful meaning in the above definitions...until you try to explain them to an eight-year-old. Upon examination, they prove to be almost perfectly circular. The problem is that you know perfectly well what vicious means, because when you were eight you had it pointed out to you a sufficient number of times by an older and wiser head.

     If you’re a regular reader of Liberty’s Torch, you’re all but certainly of a conservative or libertarian bent. You’re a friend to political freedom; you uphold American national sovereignty; and you subscribe to the Judeo-Christian system of morals and ethics that until about 1970 virtually every child raised in this country was taught before he was allowed to cross the street unaccompanied. The probability is high that you learned the meaning of vicious as I suggested in the paragraph above.

Now for a snippet from Sarah’s piece:

     Among other things I’ve been called a white supremacist (blink), a fascist (blink), homophobic (blink, blink), racist (blink), a “fan of the Portuguese regime deposed in the seventies” (this by the German wonder who doesn’t get that one can oppose both a regime and its replacement. Ah, for a mind that simple), atheist (blink, blink, blink), Mormon (blink)… Well, let’s say and save time that I’ve been called everything but a good person.

     It wears on me, not so much because they’re insults, but because they’re crazy insults. I am aware that at some level, permanently, my name is tainted with a large selection of the public. This doesn’t worry me perhaps as much as it should, because a) most people don’t play that much on the net, much less in our circles b) there’s always indie. I can duck out, go fully indie and write historical erotic romances, for all I care. (No, I didn’t write them. No, I don’t advise you to look, but while researching? Henry VIII Catherine of Aragon lactating erotica. I didn’t see anything past the title, and I don’t even.)

     I differ with the above in only one respect: they’re not “crazy insults;” they’re deliberate, premeditated attempts to delegitimize her, such that persons who don’t know Sarah personally won’t grant her the conditional respectful hearing we call “the benefit of the doubt.”

     Mind you, I don’t know Sarah personally. I’ve read much that she’s written, both fiction and nonfiction; that’s all. But on the strength of what I’ve read, she’s a good and honorable person who deserves none of the awful things her detractors have said about her. I would be pleased to make her acquaintance, were the opportunity to arise. But what of someone unacquainted with her work? What if he were to read or hear the slanders that have been showered upon her? What if he were inclined to accept then, perhaps because they emerged from the mouth of a friend or a respected acquaintance?

     Sarah is not alone in having suffered such a shower of venom. Virtually anyone of a generally conservative or libertarian bent who expresses himself where others can hear or read it has caught some of it.

     The people who pour these slanders upon decent Americans like Sarah know they’re untrue. They do so for political advantage. They seek to intimidate those who disagree with them into silence, possibly out of political engagement altogether. And they’ve reaped an unfortunate degree of success.

     Were I required to define vicious to an eight-year-old, such deliberate slanderers would be among the first examples I’d give him.

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     Nothing illuminates the innate viciousness of the Left quite as well as the foofaurauw over the Sad Puppies 3 campaign. If you’re unacquainted with the world of science fiction, it was a campaign to open the Hugo Awards balloting to a spectrum of works wider than those that have dominated the Hugos in recent years. If you’re interested, read further about it at your leisure. Here are some links:

• On Feminism, Power, And Groups Yet Again
• Sad Puppies Update: Outrage Edition
• Even Sadder Puppies: An Insider Cops To The Scam

     If not, I’ll merely say that campaigns of slander and denunciation conducted by persons of leftist politics have been used to discourage the consideration of books and stories from writers on the Right. It made no difference whether those conservative and libertarian writers injected their politics into their works; all that mattered to the Leftist slanderers was the writer’s personal political posture. In that regard, it was a perfect illustration of Leftist viciousness, with this for a grace note: a Hugo Award has no monetary value. It’s just a form of applause from science fiction fandom.

     Before the slanderers got their act into gear, a Hugo was a token that could bring a book increased sales. These days, it’s indifferent at best. Sometimes having “Hugo Award winner” on the cover has harmed a book’s sales, precisely because of the awareness of many SF readers that the awards process has been “colonized” by the activist Left. Perhaps the breakthrough success of “Sad Puppies 3” will change that; at any rate, it is to be hoped.

     It’s an old bit of wisdom that the most vicious battles are fought over the smallest stakes. We have an example in the above.

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     It’s about 2:30 AM, the Aleve^TM is starting to work, and I might be near to trying afresh for a few hours’ sleep. If you like, you can dismiss the above diatribe as the maunderings of an old and very weary man. I’m fed up with the viciousness of the Left side of the political spectrum. After reading Sarah’s plaint, I simply had to give it the proper coloration at long last.

     These people are evil.
     They know precisely what they’re doing.
     They deserve to be ostracized for their slanders.
     Decent persons should tell them so to their faces.
     Whatever follows, follows. Be not afraid to do right as you understand it.

     Good night.