All posts by Machine Trooper

Dialog at Twilight’s Last Gleaming #1

There’s some notable conversations taking place in “flyover country” these days. I think I’ll document some of them.

NGV: I know (our co-worker) has a family to provide for, but stealing from the company…pissing off the customers…I don’t see how they wouldn’t fire him.

RAV: I don’t want anybody to lose their job–especially in this economy. He needs to go on welfare or something, because he’s damaging our reputation.

NGV: I feel bad for his family, though.

RAV: Yeah. There ain’t that many jobs out there, and frankly, depending on what happens in this election, there might not be an America for much longer. It could be a lot more like Brazil or Venezuela pretty soon.

NGV: Speaking of that, when the shit hits the fan, you’re welcome to bring your family and follow me to (redacted) in Idaho.

RAV: No kidding? (Wow, he’s a lot more prepared than I thought.)

NGV: Yeah, seriously. If all you’ve got is your bug-out bag, that’s cool. Ammunition won’t be a problem, either–we’ve got plenty to share.

RAV: Oh yeah? (Holy cow, he’s blowing OPSEC all to hell. Doesn’t he realize we’re talking on cellphones?) I don’t know where I’ll be when the day comes, or what my travel options will be, but I really do appreciate that. (I just wish you’d be wiser about what you say on an unsecured line.)

More evidence That FBI are Stooges of the Clinton Mafia

Remember that one crime (from a long list of Clinton scandals) was that the Clinton Administration in the 1990s illegally collected FBI files on their political opposition  (the blackmail factor helps explain why the Clintons never were taken to task for any of their high crimes and treason–the Monica Lewinski episode was just a smokescreen which distracted the public from the far more serious crimes while providing the illusion that the media wasn’t covering up for the Clinton Machine). Abuse of power on this scale dwarfs anything Nixon ever did, but would only be “wrong” if a Republican was guilty of it.

Well, we already knew Comey and Lynch are in the tank for Hillary, anyway. The video below is just more evidence.

Looks like the Hillary campaign better come up with some more mud to sling at Trump, quick. Maybe they can find a Millennial to come forward and say, “He shook me when I was a baby!”

Big Fork is Here!

Some of us have been waiting a long time for this–online resources and social networks that are not a part of the left-wing hive mind.

First off, and most exciting to me, is an alternative to wikipedia:

INFOGALACTIC.COM

(The Planetary Knowledge Core)

Then there is the alternative to twitter:

GAB.AI

…And I’m on it. You can find me @MachineTrooper.

And (completing a short, chronologically backwards list) there is an alternative to the borg browsers which collaborate with the NSA’s domestic spying, censoring information which contradicts The Narrative, etc:

BRAVE.COM

These alternatives are young; at least one of them (Gab) is still in beta testing mode; but I am using all three and am very pleased to finally have a choice. If you are able, and inclined, your donations to any or all of these efforts would certainly help them succeed.

 

PS: I quit Faceborg some time ago, and don’t plan on ever going back. I have created an account at MeWe, however, and occasionally post there. So far, they seem to support free speech.

The Admiral – A Review

Pre-Napoleonic era wars are veiled in obscurity for all but historians and fans of history. So it seems incredible to most people that the Dutch were once a formidable power in Europe, and even developed some important military innovations (it was they who first fielded platoon-sized units, for instance).

This is a well-crafted film that seems to have drawn more from actual history than from convention, cliche` and ubiquitous Hollywood tropes. It highlights a period in the life of Michiel de Ruyter, a 17th Century naval tactician who led the Dutch Navy to impressive victories over the British and French.

Similar to Napoleon Bonaparte over a century later, de Ruyter was a commoner who rose through the ranks to a field-grade commission on his own ability and execution, among a typical European hierarchy built upon caste and dominated by the nobility. During the tenure of De Witt as prime minister of the Dutch Republic, de Ruyter is promoted to admiral, and leads the Dutch Fleet to glory.

admiralbattle

CGI was used to depict a top-down view of the naval battles, which looked like something you might see in a PC strategy game. I consider this a clever idea…but it was fumbled in the execution. It does provide an idea of the opposing forces, but usually does little to depict how the battles played out. As an erstwhile armchair historian, using the CGI strategic view to better effect would have rendered this film a tour de force of audio-visual military history.

I’m far from an afficionado on Netherlands politics in any century, but the political subplot rang true. It also provides an historic lesson relevant to the situation citizens of the USA find themselves in right now (not that anybody from either major side has any interest in learning from history). The Dutch abandoned self-rule by representative government and volunteered for the chains of an oligarchy (a monarchy, on the surface). The film also provides a tiny glimpse of the sort of consequences you will suffer by trading away your freedom for promises of unity, security, ethnic pride, or whatever magic beans strike you as a good trade during a fever-peak of emotion.

The prince of the Netherlands, who would be elevated to king, seems entirely familiar to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of European royalty (maybe any royalty anywhere). The film makers made it clear enough for adults in the audience what sort of indulgences the prince harbored, but I appreciated that his faggotry wasn’t smeared in our faces to the point that it distracts from the main plot.

It’s a Dutch film, and so most of the dialog is Dutch, with English subtitles.

To Retort, Or Not To Retort

…That is the question I’ve been pondering for a while with regards to dishonest, drive-by, one-star reviews at Amazon and Goodreads.

Conventional wisdom is for authors to avoid responding to negative reviews, lest you look defensive, yada yada yada. I’ve done that up until now.

But I’ve been mulling over something I read about Trump: He’s one of those successful guys who fires right back when criticised. First debate with Shrillery notwithstanding (because he did actually come off as defensive), this has worked pretty well for him.

I’ve received negative reviews on all my novels, and some of my shorter books as well. But one of them from about a year ago stands out as the wthoughtcoporst. It’s intentionally insulting, first of all–no doubt a ploy to get an emotional rise out of me (all the more reason for me to not take the bait, I suppose, but c’est le guerre). And it’s also intentionally misleading, by somebody who evidently didn’t read the book. It’s got all the fingerprints of an SJW troll attempting to protect unwashed brains around the world from a counter-narrative.

The point-and-shriek review, and my response are here.

Trump Drops the Ball in First Debate

It’s a cardinal sin in any sort of conflict to underestimate your opponent. That’s true in football, boxing, war…and in politics. No matter how weak your adversary is, or appears to be, it is foolish to count your chickens before they’re hatched. To paraphrase Bob Griese, overconfidence leads to arrogance, which leads to carelessness, which leads to defeat.

I’m not saying underestimation was the folly of Trump himself. I do consider him overconfident, but I honestly don’t know what goes through his mind most of the time.

But it definitely is the folly of Trump’s supporters. Loudmouths all over the “Alt Right” and, in fact, all over the neomasculine blogosphere have been talking smack about the debates for months, assuming a Trump victory with some rather outlandish predictions–like Hillary wouldn’t even show up; or that she would collapse on stage or go into a coughing fit.

This smack-talking is nothing new. I remember vividly from 2012, from memes and comment threads, how the cuck Paul Ryan was going to destroy the moron Joe Biden in their debate; and even how RINO Mitt Romney was going to win the election in a landslide.

The enemy is so weak, all we have to do is show up. Like Mike Tyson in Tokyo.

Evil is rarely incompetent. The people who installed Barack Hussein Obama, and who have sold Hillary to half of the electorate already, did not get to where they are by inept buffonery. It is idiotic to assume that Hillary’s handlers can’t prep her to look good for 90 minutes. They made Obama look good, for Kek’s sake.

But the debate wasn’t lost because Hillary looked good. It wasn’t even because the “mediator” is a shill for the Democrats. (Anybody with a functioning brain has come to expect that.)

Trump beat himself.

The man is just not a good speaker. He played defense, letting Hillary take, and maintain, the initiative. He missed opening after opening, wasted time with bumbling explanations that nearly always missed the key points, and often proved himself incapable of even completing a coherent sentence.

The swing voters are just as superficial as the “Alt Right” loudmouths who assume a Trumpslide because alpha male. (And because “master of rhetoric.”) This has been a fact since the very first televised presidential debate. They will choose a silver-tongued devil like Slick Willy or Hussein every time, even when they know they’re being lied to (or should know–this goes back to the whole functioning brain qualifier).  Trump didn’t look “presidential,” or even comfortable. I fully expect to read and hear descriptive words like “rude” and “bully” all day tomorrow. Maybe even “illiterate,” “dullard,” “unintelligent” or the like. That is the image he presented to the ovine masses.

I could never be a politician, for many reasons. One of them is that I am probably even worse than Trump at expressing my ideas orally.  I do not level these criticisms of him out of any notion that I could have performed better.

I’m merely observing that he needs a different game plan if he has any hope of articulating his own ideas or exposing Hillary’s glaring weaknesses in such a fashion that the lapdog media won’t be able to continue hiding them. I’m also observing that the smack-talkers on the Trump Train are not to be taken seriously, now or ever.

Learn from history, lest you repeat it.

…Again.

The Man in the High Castle

Alternate history is a genre full of potential. Unfortunately, the concepts are usually more interesting than their execution in film or fiction.

In a world…

…Where the Axis Powers won WWII, a resistance movement sparks to life in 1962.

Now that you’re hooked with that brilliant high-concept pitch, some expository details:

  • America lost the Second World War in 1952.
  • Nazi Germany got The Bomb first, evidently, and used it to force surrender.
  • Hitler is still in power, but his health is failing.
  • Goering and Goebels (maybe Himmler, too) are jockeying into position to succeed Adolf.
  • The Eastern US is a puppet German state; the western US is occupied by Imperial Japan.
  • In the middle is “neutral territory.”
  • The reason for that neutrality, how it is maintained, and what it means exactly, is not completely clear as of Episode 3.

I see no reason to continue watching after the third episode. In fact, I pretty much knew all I needed to know 15 minutes into Episode 1. Well, probably upon reading the Amazon Prime blurb. But I’m always hoping to be surprised (and am, once in a while), so I clicked on “play.” I kept it playing for three episodes because I had paperwork to do and couldn’t find much that looked better.

There’s really nothing new here. Every part of the story so far, subtly or not-so-subtly, faithfully follows the cultural Marxist playbook. Listing quibbles would be a tedious task. Let’s cut to the Groundbreaking Plot Device:

Wanna know what motivates the resistance movement against the JapaNazis? You might suppose it would have something to do with the twofold reign of terror and a yearning for the freedom that was lost.

You’d be wrong.

See, this “Man in the High Castle” is making propaganda films. (No narcissism in Hollywood. Nope, not one smidgeon of evidence of self-importance.) These films are smuggled through underground networks, and depict an “alternate” outcome of the war, where the Good Guys won. (You know, the one we in this reality believe in.)

highcastlemap

Without these films, Americans are unable to imagine a different course of history from the one they’ve traveled. But now, thanks to being spoon-fed what could have happened differently, it’s time to throw off the shackles of their Axis oppressors!

By watching movies.

Well, there is one act of defiance you might expect from a resistance movement…an extremely incompetent one doomed to fail, that is: an ambush of two quislings in a limousine. Despite complete surprise and a crossfire with automatic weapons (Thompsons, I think, though I wasn’t watching closely) one SS officer armed with a Luger emerges from the kill zone unscathed and takes out all 4-5 ambushers.

(Maybe the scene betrays the director’s closet belief in Aryan Supremacy?)

kinopoisk.ruIt’s a mystery how such silly storytelling can be delivered with a straight face. Perhaps the artistic geniuses behind this series assume an alternate history movie (again, not one iota of painfully obvious self-aggrandizement, here) is revolutionary because they don’t know what life is like outside their leftist echo chamber. In Hollywood (the capitol of Social Justice Propaganda) anyone who dares challenge The Narrative is apprehended by the Thought Police and summarily character assassinated…which means this plot is an example of one of the three Laws of the SJWs: they always project.

In fact, peel away some of the semantic/visual disguises, and this series paints a dystopian portrait of the fundamental transformation to be wrought on America within a few years (but already underway in the Obamanation).

You know–aside from the quibble that the USA they aspire to will not enjoy any prosperity similar to the actual America of 1962.

Amerigeddon–A Review

There’s a scene in the movie The Right Stuff which takes place during the first few months of “the Space Race” after Sputnik was launched. An American muses, “Why do our rockets always blow up on the launch pad?” or something to that effect. I would have had the same question, seeing as how America was still an industrial giant and the world leader in technology. How could Russian rocket scientists be enjoying more success than ours, especially in a country like the USSR where people capable of creative thinking are among those targeted and routinely murdered by the state?

I’ll bet I have the same kind of frustration those late ’50s rocket scientists had. How is it that smart, hardworking, independent thinkers are consistently outperformed at cinematic storytelling by the left-wing hive mind? Why do our movies always suffer poor story telling, cheesy dialog and generally inept suspension of disbelief?

The first couple minutes of Amerigeddon are promising. But then the primary villain was introduced and my cringing began. But I didn’t cringe because of how eeee-veel the bad guys are. The ensuing conversation is corny enough to embarrass a B-Movie Nazi, and it doesn’t get better from there.

Unfortunately, some of the characters are soldiers in the 101st Division. I say unfortunately because the film makers evidently did not bother to recruit a technical advisor with some basic military knowledge. I suppose they get things wrong no worse than most movies and TV shows with alleged military elements, but this is a big taboo for me. I wouldn’t try to shoot a film about doctors or stock brokers without consulting one or more. With all the veterans out here, there’s no excuse for getting the basics so utterly jacked-up.

The plot is fairly weak, though I have seen worse. The hero confronts a Congressional committee about our state of helplessness in the case of an ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP). One wonders what he hoped to accomplish, other than get himself placed on a Domestic Terrorist (“red”) List. The politicians ignore the warning and make veiled threats against the hero.

The EMP occurs once all the exposition is established. A few of the characters know it’s an EMP from the moment the lights go out. Meanwhile, the “soldier” character realizes that the US Army has been subsumed by the UN, and deserts. The rest of the movie depicts a small conglomeration of family and friends retreating to the safety of the rich prepper hero’s backwoods retreat; then fighting off an attack by UN troops in a slipshod, lackluster climactic sequence.

Filming the climactic scenes was probably more exciting than watching them is.

wearenotok

Even though the producer is a millionaire, and millions probably went into making this film, it comes off as very low-budget. With the right choices, that wouldn’t have been as obvious. But no budget is big enough to compensate for what coulda’/shoulda’ been straightened out in the screenwriting stage.

I wanted this movie to be good. It is not.

The only people who will cut this movie some slack are those like me who appreciate what the film makers were trying to do. Watching it is not going to change anyone’s mind, or nudge fence-sitters into an epiphany…because the glaring problems result in a total package which doesn’t come off as believable.

The culture war is not a fair fight. The left has been sneaking their messages into entertainment for a long, long time. They could afford to be subtle because they had so much time to program the minds of the masses, and almost nobody called them out for it (before the Internet came along, anyway). Most people alive today have had The Narrative spoon-fed to them for all their lives. We can’t boil frogs the way they have, for a number of reasons.

And frankly, we are running out of time. We haven’t yet felt the bite of efforts like “Net Neutrality,” just as the “greatest generation” didn’t suffer the full consequences of the New Deal until it could be blamed on convenient scapegoats (like the free market itself), and like the Great Recession and “housing bubble” didn’t manifest until their architects were retired and could safely blame their successors. And like the catastrophic effects of Obamacare won’t be fully felt until Hussein is duly whitewashed, canonized, and (with the media’s willing assistance) can blame his political rivals. But even beyond “Net Neutrality,” Hillary has hinted at her intent to shut down the alternative media. A clear violation of the law she will swear to uphold and defend, but who is going to hold her accountable to her oath–the FBI?  The DOJ? The Supreme Court? Congress? You?

Yeah, just like Obama has been held accountable.

Ahem. So with time running out, we can’t plant little seeds like the left did over the course of generations. Besides, they were virtually unopposed while we have opposition everywhere. When it comes to the arts, the left has an overwhelming numerical advantage. When it comes to film, TV, video games and other expensive arts, they have every conceivable advantage (other than their Narrative itself, which is built with and on lies, and routinely contradicts itself).

So what can we do?

I’ve drifted too far off-topic already. This movie will not win hearts and minds.

Below is a link to some speculative SHTF tales that are much better (though the plausibility of the Red Dawn remake is questionable).