I woke late in the night to text from the number of a reader who recently contacted me and asked that I contact him when next I would be in his portion of the country. I had sent him a simple merry Christmas two days past. The text was not from him, but from a person who named him their son and declared, “I don’t know what my son saw in you or your many horrible books,” and closed with a demand made in a flat manner that seemed to take my compliance for granted, that I was being spoken against in the name of God and was not to contact this number again.
I straight away erased the number from my contacts and went back to sleep. I wake now even wondering if this was a fever dream or a real text, as I’ve been in bed sick for near a week. It then occurred, that I might have learned something of this reader, perhaps a college student [a bit young for my target audience] and was returned home where a concerned parent nosed through his things.
Maybe a dream?
In any case, this offers the cracked pottery of this mind a chance to critique itself. For, I have had more than one male host—a reader of mine—declare that they are glad that their women do not read or that they might demand my exit. In one house my books are hidden so that the thought police might not denounce me for a criminal mind. As with my family, readers seems to develop the most animosity towards my work and therefore my person [for in a slave matrix we are only our works] when they are Liberal Progressive or Conservative Christian in view.
Indeed, when walking with a local Church Lady, who I discuss scripture and gospel with, I asked her not to name me a writer to her friends, as most people who like my writing initially, develop a dislike for it and for me within ten articles.
Some 11 years into this experiment in weird literature that is this website, made for me by a fighter I coached over two decades, I should conduct an inquest.
The evidence is damning.
From a high of 30,000 readers I have 4,500.
Including various surges of readership, such as some 5,000 from one podcast, it seems that I have lost 9 in 10 of those readers that have initially approved of my writing.
That is a Fail, a fraction of a Fail.
My goals in committing writing to this space in 2011 were and remain:
-1. Supporting my books on self-defense and urban survival
-2. Learning how to write better in an open forum
-3. To become good novelist, to entertain in a meaningful way so that such writing might benefit a young man not yet born in the gathering darkness of Post Modernity
My target audience was and is:
-1. Masculine
The Moral compass was and is:
-1. To inform the reader against such society wide lies as “the police man is your friend” and that he has “a right to self-defense,” which might land him in prison for defending his life, limb and property
-2. While discouraging opposition to government in favor of a fractional autonomy, by which he might remain himself and yet not be crushed by the Iron Heel of The State by foolishly opposing its leviathan progress.
The age I envision in writing—as I rarely know the age of a person who writes in with a comment or query—is 35, that age when a man pursuing combat arts must seek a more sustainable path to keep from being damaged by this pursuit. This is also that time in life at which awakening to a more complex world is often the case, as Dante makes clear in his Inferno, when for a man at the mid-point of life the forest seems to gather dark.
Through all of this, I had hoped to become a standout novelist in short form so as to write stories suitable for youthful men, which I did with Prentice Dolphin. However, most of my fiction is unsuitable for such young readers, targeted as it is to my existing readers, who tend to be over 25 so far as I know.
This writing process has resulted in content that could be construed as arguing against itself.
I cannot name much good to have come from this writing. The little bit of good committed is limited to three younger men between the ages of 25 and 45 writing to me over the past year to inform me that due to my writing, they have resigned from right wing political organizations. This is ironic in that the people who dislike my work on impulse most vehemently are liberal progressives. I think it is good that these men did what they did, because as fighters, their political organizers were likely to throw them under the bus in the event of some dust-up that might have occurred in association with one of their political events, most likely with the Righties being attacked by the Lefties and then punished by the Law for defending themselves.
Other than the above it seems I have helped some fighters avoid injuries, rehab from injuries and stay clear of legal trouble for defending themselves against criminals.
In the main, it seems a selfish process, a minor success in that the site has paid for itself over 11 years, having dispensed some advice that has helped a handful of men and expressed opinions found so outrageous by most men inclined to dissident thinking, that nine in ten of those turn away in disgust.
I must rate this site as both a minor success and a major failure. And, as this site is my workshop, its proceeds seeming to agree with the indicting parent’s charge that my work is “horrible,” a part of me inclines to agree that my writing is perhaps a pox upon the collective mind of human society.
The text or dream that began this muse highlights why I wish to remain little known, for if nine in ten of the wayward men who have grown sick of the lies sold as truths in this Satanic Matrix of Postmodern America turn away from these little writings in disgust, then easily 99 in 100 of those who embrace the devil’s sibilant song as God’s very Word, will wish to see this thought refugee hung from a tree.
I would love it if some teenager somewhere had to hide my toxically masculine books from his Karen mother. Poor boy probably has a non-father.
One definition of the Devil is the force that keeps the vast majority of people in their place as the cells of a giant organism. It fights through people (think the Matrix's agents) and events against any cell that decides to take its fate into its own hands. In that world view, a second force exists that can lift the few rebels out of their servitude.
Any young man falling for astroturfed reaction can be directed to Banned Hipster, e g. bannedhipster.home.blog/2021/12/08/american-fascists-are-fake-and-glow
As for infections, and specifically The Plague, those with a warm & dry garden may want to add liquorice to their medicinal corner: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33918301 . This one courtesy of the angry anglo woman at Disenchanted Scholar: disenchantedscholar.wordpress.com/2021/07/28/my-protocol-and-why-for-each-part/amp
"One definition of the Devil is the force that keeps the vast majority of people in their place as the cells of a giant organism. It fights through people (think the Matrix's agents) and events against any cell that decides to take its fate into its own hands. In that world view, a second force exists that can lift the few rebels out of their servitude."
That sounds positively satanic, gnostic, radically autonomous.
You're rather glowy yourself, with your trooferism.
Go shill your blog somewhere else.
This post surprised me. I find it hard to believe that anybody would would find james stuff particularly offensive. Also, I’ve been surprised that several young dissidents have mentioned lafond. Even some South Africans. The myth 20 guys and borzoi obviously have been heavily influenced by lafond. Borzoi is getting fairly prominent. James has said in the past that his topical stuff is more popular than his fiction. I follow the zman blog. I have noted that he has lost many of his old commentators. May just be a blog life cycle thing.
I I buy your books and hand them out freely as gifts. If the recipient doesn't like it, fuck 'em! Maybe they'll like the next one. >:D
A lot more people have lost their internet than have thus far lost their homes. Those people are working more, if at all possible, to make ends meet. Those that have lost their homes, largely without situational awareness at any level have a whole new ball of wax in their uncalloused paws. As the crime waves enlarge ... at least here in Cali where the Clinton News Network and MSNDC pump subtle Christian judgement bombs on homelessness yet know about the eviction moratorium expiring can't connect the store robberies and that magnificent train robbery to said rent moratorium or the 70% increase in food insecurity since the slime ball in chief has settled into office. The syphilitic POS gives his Snake of the Union address tonight. I actually saw his new 'Duck and Cover' scam combined with masking up and social distancing today. I predicted for everyone who planned to acquiesce I mean vote for the turd that the price of gas would have double in a year and indeed it did. I imagine for every set of parents that lose their internet there are a couple of children cut off. These parents are inveterate shitlibs who care more about the unvaxxed than nuclear war or the atrocities of our empire. While they parade around in Ukrainian blue and yellow jock straps, ragging each other's pills, they are 'against violence'.
"...as Dante makes clear in his Inferno, when for a man at the mid-point of life the forest seems to gather dark."
As a 35 year old who discovered your writing late last year and one who is going through what you describe, I would like you to write about your views on this in longform. Many, many, many men historically, particularly intelligent creative or eccentric types, go through a dark night of the soul in their thirties. Though this is something little discussed.
Example: like you I'm a big fan of Burton. His mid-point darkening coincides with leaving military service without ever having experienced true war, fame (the publication of 'Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah'), his first large dose of failure (the balls up of the Somali expedition & the spear through the face/Speke's discovery), marriage for security (his marriage appears rather sexless), his father's death, Speke's betrayal upon returning to England (and then later Speke's obvious public suicide), his brother being sent catatonic to an asylum for life, entering into consular service (effectively chaining himself to a desk he hated), bouts of massive depression, and likely more. All of this happend when he was around 35-40 in the 1850s. Dying at 70, all of this began at the literal midpoint.
Fobuin, the quote is from a book named "Gnosis", so yes. I encourage anyone interested in reality to go down the same rabbit holes as William Cooper.
I am not Banned Hipster.