679 thoughts on “The Paw of Oberon 5/4”

1. ‘Again, Nigel, you are showing an inability to tell the difference between describing or explaining and approving.’

   Dear God, what the sweet bibbety fuck are you on about? There’s an approval of SOMETHING coming off this whole comment, and it’s less to do with military history and more to do with the ease with which you call someone a ‘whore’ and a ‘twat.’

2. … really? It’s a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand.

   Also, I’ll be at Balticon the weekend after next. Feel free to stop by and say hi!

3. Is Kratman getting some of Vox Day’s misogyny via osmosis or was he always like this?

4. ‘It’s just war. Get used to it’

   It’s never ‘just’ war, and I’d rather not normalise it or incorporate the kind of thinking it fosters into everyday life, thank you very much.

5. ‘She insults and impugns me and it’s a disgrace to attack back?’

   What you said? Yeah. Maybe you think it’s rational because this is suddenly a war setting, because you’ve internalised this weird respect for certain types of brutal tactics? Or maybe you’re just a disgrace.

6. Andrew? Andrew! Hey, trapped any brilliant beads of captive golden sunlight in factories devoid of life for the evening, twice, lately. And does the Marshfield PD know that your keepers are letting you at a computer?

7. Actually, Steven, you revolting dolt, I came here only to explain what is and is not rational in war, and how that doesn’t necessarily mean moral. It degenerated, of course.

8. She’s dead, Alex. But keep up insulting the dead; it’s just so brave of you.

9. snowcrash:

   “But perhaps we can at least limit ourselves to his ridiculous statements and works.

   It is, after all, a target rich environment.”

   Right, sorry. The temptation to coax what remained of his mask of respectability was just a bit too much. /rpg.net reader

10. CPaca

    I dunno. When it comes to Kratman, “off his meds” is my go to description.

    There’s also a weird sort of inferiority complex at play – he’s convinced that he’s deserving of abuse, so does almost anything to receive that. It’s unusual, but to each their own kink I suppose.

11. Well, this is horrible.

12. XS

    Whait is there to coax when he’s shown up buck-naked and clawing at his face?

13. Thanks, Alex.

14. Is alex your actual first name?

15. If only there was a feature that you let you search an entire page for a single phrase. Alas.

    I’ll be at Balticon, Tom. Enjoying SF/F fandom. you should try that. 🙂

16. I take a lot of this as the equivalent of “smack-talk” you get in sports and sports bars. Why it’s appropriate for a science fiction chat-room is beyond me …. but I can hardly quibble about that as my y-chromosome somehow insists that I continue to participate.

17. [quoting Kurtz]
    Willard: In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action – what is often called ruthless – what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.

18. Steven, I don’t insult people for disagreeing, as a general rule. For you I make exceptions because we have some history between us. The first insult, rather, the first lie here was told by Cat about me. I think.

19. Just curious.

20. … you know you can go back and read the comments, right? One of the advantages over a comment page vs. a sports bar conversation?

21. Kurtz: I’ve seen horrors… horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that… but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror… Horror has a face… and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces… seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.

22. Are you, perchance, a girl Alex, or a transgender?

23. quoting Kurtz
    Willard: In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action – what is often called ruthless – what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.

24. quoting Kurtz
    Willard: As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid lying morality, and so I am beyond caring.

25. I’d hardly be responding to people calling me that if it wasn’t, Tom. I mean, technically, it’s Alexander, but that’s a mouthful.

26. Sorry for the duplicates…was getting errors.

27. “[quoting Kurtz]
    Willard: In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action – what is often called ruthless – what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.”

    and of course the ever classic (spoken as only Jack Nicholson could do … with sneering contempt) …

    Jessup: Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

28. Will:

    In a way, Kurtz has a point. One of the flaws – I touched on it in an earlier answer to Nigel – to moral philosophy is the failure to account for duration. We can’t just measure good and evil by breadth and depth and width and scope and intensity; we must account also for duration. The best orgasm is human history isn’t worth much if followed by an eternity in Hell, say. To be worth anything, for good or ill, something has to last for a while.

    That’s part, I think, of what drove Stalinism, and perhaps all modern -isms, the notion that it would all be worth it, all the gulags, all the death camps, the Holomodor, and the Killing Fields, because an eternity (which is another bit of preposterous thinking) of even a small good or a small improvement is mathematically worth any sacrifice in the here and now. That’s where Kurtz’s, or, rather, the VC’s, pile of arms came in.

    But on the other end, it isn’t just about the revolutionary good, but what you have to do in the here and now just to buy time for your grandchildren to grow up. What’s acceptable then? For that? What isn’t? Is it worth doing anything if we’re not willing to do enough to make it work?

29. That’s not an entirely clear answer.

30. Thank you for your service, Lt. Col. Kratman.

    I don’t like some of your language choices (not that you care about my opinion, I’m sure), but your patriotism is beyond question.

    And I do understand the point you were making about the layers of rationality in war. So thank you for that.

31. Steve, I will be as polite and civil as people are to me…or more impolite and uncivil than they are. The choice is entirely theirs.

32. By the way, no thanks necessary. I enjoyed it. A lot. Yes, to include war.

33. it’s an insult Alex .. he thinks he’s being clever … you know calling you a girl or maybe a trans-gender or whatever. In his mind there’s nothing worse.

34. Wrong, Olif, that much, at least, was not intended as an insult.

35. “if you listen to dogs bark, you’ll go deaf.”

36. @Tom Points for the answer in any case…makes me think the quotes landed right where I hoped. I posted them as an “aha is this what we’re talking about” thing. If so, I think I understand better where you’re coming from (I’ll try to go back and look at this in that light).

    Might it be fair to say that you’re contending people in these situations have a _rationale_ for what they’re doing, rather than actually objectively _being_ rational? That could be some of what I misheard in it. I think a lot of us hear “rational” and assume it means “justified” or “good,” and I think I get that you’re not saying that. (?) Thanks.

37. I mean, I have a pretty good hunch you’re not or I wouldn’t have bothered writing this.

38. Looking back on this delight of a thread, I can see that Kratman came in with a game plan: play the “I’m not a racist/sexist/etc, you are!” card that his ilk seem inexplicably convinced is a successful gambit. As a secondary play, he also wished to educate us all on War and how he knows so much more about it than us.

    Amusingly, what he actually did was to demonstrate Moltke’s aphorism about the likelihood of plans surviving contact with the enemy, as he swiftly descended into the textual equivalent of incoherent spluttering, his fine game plan abandoned, forced ever onwards into profanity by his driving need to insult the world.

39. Will:

    Kudos to you for being much brighter than the moronic shits who couldn’t figure that out. No, rational and justified and good are not the same things. It’s a peculiarity and flaw of their minds that they insist, openly or tacitly, that they are and must be the same.

    What the enemy has is a cause. That’s perhaps non-rational, but they can defend it rationally, even so. We insist on not understanding his cause, because we don’t like the conclusions. At core, his cause is about two things. One is the corrupt oil oligarchies. The sooner they’re gone, the better.

    The other cause, and where we get involved,, is about the position of women, free and on their own two feet (our take), or on all fours or just their knees, to receive (his). It’s been this way since Qutb, I think it was, saw – horror or horrors – American males and females dancing, while actually – can you believe it? – touching.

    Whatever we are willing to do to keep our daughters free and out of burkas, he is willing to do to keep them burkad up, walking behind, and, as mentioned, on their knees or all fours, to receive.

    This isn’t something he has much choice about. Indeed, he has no choice. His rules of life were laid down by the highest authority there is, and mere man has no right to change them. To the extent we see moderate Muslims, those that can entertain the notion of legislatively defying God, he sees not moderates, but _bad_ Muslims.

    Given that his ultimate orders come from the highest authority, as far as he is concerned, anything that genuinely advances his cause is rational. It may or may not be “good” or pleasant, but he can probably not admit that it is evil, either.

    Educated girls, girls who defy his God-given law, are the ultimate evil to him, and also the ultimate threat. Of course he kills them. If he thought about Sura Five he’d probably nail them up instead.

    So given his cause, given the limits he operates under, given the threat presented by a certain type of educated girl, and given that the west has pretty much given up on what was a lost cause before we even started, of _course_ killing them is rational. He thinks it’s necessary and godly, hence probably thinks it’s good. We need not agree about the good part, but it is ignorant and narrow minded of us, nay box-o-rocks stupid, and potentially racist for us not to recognize his reasons and his rationality.

40. Note, too, by the way, Will, that the enemy is presuming an infinity of good, _when_ he wins – as he has no doubt that he will – so any human suffering in the short term is trivial or even irrelevant by comparison.

41. “No, rational and justified and good are not the same things. It’s a peculiarity and flaw of their minds that they insist, openly or tacitly, that they are and must be the same.”

    that’s a nice strawman …

    I’m in agreement with many of the things you say about the belief and customs of the ‘enemy’ …. but why are we fighting them? Is it truly about how they view and treat women (as you claim)? How is that our business? We might believe that it’s reprehensible and immoral … but still … it’s not *our* business.

42. can see that Kratman came in with a game plan: play the “I’m not a racist/sexist/etc, you are!” card that his ilk seem inexplicably convinced is a successful gambit.

    Ah the old ‘I know you are but what am I’ card. It’s strange to see adults use it.

43. Mark – I suspect that’s a by-product of a worldview where you’ve decided that an entire community consists of SJWs, and you’ve sufficiently Othered that particular groups as to justify almost anything you do – ie, I can say X, because They are worse, and they will certainly say something even more terrible.

    When they don’t, well, you just double down I guess.

44. It’s hardly a strawman, Olif, when people keep going back to irrational as morally wrong. And almost all of you have.

    We fight them because they attacked us. They attacked us, probably, half because we’re the dominant liberal, egalitarian – hence ungodly and hateful – culture of the planet, but also as a recruiting and fund raising drive to get rid of the oil oligarchies. Some Euro weenie referred to it as – maybe inexact quote – “greatest act of theater in history”…and he was very close to correct.

    Personally I don’t give a shit how they treat their women, qua _their_ women.. There is no social contract between me and Islam. From my POV, using girls like Mallala as a weapon was a useful way to attack them, but at the point we use them, a social contract arises such that we must protect them. We don’t.

    Also personally, I think there’s a better memetic attack we can use. I said above that his rules come from God. That’s theologically sound enough. However, there are a whole slew of rules that come from the Sunna and Hadiths that strike me as theologically suspect. I mean, from their POV, either the Quran is the complete, unvarnished, perfect, unblemished word of God or it isn’t. If it isn’t, the Salafis are frauds and so is Islam. If it is, then it doesn’t need hadiths or sunna, and, indeed, those are heretical and blasphemous.

    There are some groups of Mulims, called “Quranic,” who hold just that positions, and others that say that some hadiths and sunna are useful, but not dispositive. It should not surprise anyone that the most reasonable ones, who are still good Muslims, are more or less Quranic.

    We should be using them to undermine the Salafis. Islam might still be a problem, but not nearly as bad a problem.

45. Clif, me being a woman, it is mine. Pity that it didn’t turn out that great.

46. @Alex “I’m a cis straight male, happily married. I haven’t ever loved in Massachusetts, and I’m not sure where you’re going with this.”

    Maybe he thinks Balticon is in Massachusetts? It’s really hard to tell what he is thinking.

47. Sorry, I was distracted a bit by this having to work thing. It seems to me that the strategy of going all-out on your enemy with surpassing cruelty and yadda yadda yadda has not a) been shown to work and b) been shown to work reliably. Thus I fail to see how it can be a rational strategy, wathever its effectivness. At best it can be a gamble: it we blow up their children and strike without warning or scruples, they will give us all that we want. Well… I can’t off hand think of an example where it worked. Ulster is still a part of the United Kingdom, for example.

48. Sorry, I meant to say whatever its morality.

49. No, that wouldn’t be it, Max.

50. To tie this briefly back to SF:

    One of the ongoing discussions I’ve had with people around politics in SF is how much a certain writer’s message ends up being the product of their world-building control.

    For example, there’s a little Heinlein toss-off line about how Earth collapsed “because all the best minds left”. As evidence for the “best and brightest migrate” point made by Someone Who Should Know, and therefore to be accepted as *fact* within the world; and if that makes you go (for whatever reason) “Oh, no way…” your appreciation of the book is automatically undercut.

    Similarly, Kessel’s take on “Ender’s Game” and the worldbuilding and story-creating within.

    What we are seeing here, in part, is an attempt to worldbuild in such a way that an act most people would find unthinkable is, indeed, the right & rational thing to do — for some people. We have the “Oh, but I wouldn’t think that way”, but there is still the emphasis on making it *work*.

    The common excuse for this is “Well, we have to understand them to deal with them.” — but “understanding” and “rationalizing for them” are two very different things. Indeed, I can “understand”, say, homophobia (or anti-gay bigotry, for those who start going “Uh-uh, I’m not afraid”) without finding it *rational* — even from the POV of those involved.

    One is, of course, always free to wonder *why* people who choose to build worlds to permit certain acts do so — and need not take them at their word when they explain it.

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