Since I’m getting an Instalanche right now, all of you new visitors should know that when I am not answering hate mail from angry self righteous liberals I write novels about hunting monsters for fun and profit.
This one is a hardcover omnibus of my first 3 put together.
Or if you like a little fantasy in your alternative history, here is the reason why I had to learn so darn much about the obnoxious big government political movements of the 1930s.
Warning, there will be bad language. Because you simply can’t talk about people this willfully ignorant without using the f word.
One of the cool things about whenever I post a Hate Mail post, within a day or so I get to post a Hate Mail Response to the Hate Mail Post. Fisking one moron inevitably attracts more morons, in a sort of perpetual moron cycle. (I am secretly hoping to someday learn to harness the friction energy created by liberal handwringing, which I will then sell for billions because I am a capitalist, which will cause even more liberal handwringing friction, as they demand the profits from my liberal handwringing machine to pay off their student loans).
http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/hate-mail-time-2/
After clubbing Hanna like a baby seal, Borgese felt the need to send me this piece of illogical tripe. Our special guest nematode is in italics. My response is in bold.
Larry, I hate to say this, but you’re an idiot.
Yes. I am sure you simply *hate* to call people who dare to disagree from the accepted groupthink names.
I mean, seriously, calling the Nazis socialist is just dumb.
He means it. Seriously. Because calling the socialist German political party that proudly proclaimed that they were socialists, and named themselves the National Socialists, socialists is simply absurd!
There’s just so much evidence to the contrary it makes me think you’re actually not talking about history, just about what you’d like history to be.
You will be happy to note that Borges didn’t bother to post all of this prolific evidence to the contrary.
In fact, in the comments section of the last Hate Mail post several of my readers went through a bunch of facts about how the Nazis were socialists, just like they said that they were. The response by Hanna was to link to Wikipedia where somebody said they were like totally not. Because if you read it some place on the internet then it totally must be true. Especially Wikipedia, which as everyone knows is never biased or wrong.
This Nazis are right wing is something that needs to get put to bed once and for all.
Okay, so let’s look at this Hanna cited Wiki article. It says that “a majority of scholars identify Nazism as being a far right form of politics” (Not that modern leftist academics would try to sweep the idea that their fellow travelers were embarrassing horrific murder machines under the rug or anything biased like that). Okay. So the academics agree!
So let’s take a look at some more things from this very same article.
The radical Nazi Joseph Goebbels hated capitalism, viewing it as having Jews at its core and stressed the need for the party to emphasize both a proletarian and national character, these views were shared by Otto Strasser who later left the Nazi Party in the belief that Hitler had betrayed the party’s socialist goals by allegedly endorsing capitalism.[31] Large segments of the Party staunchly supported its official socialist, revolutionary, and anti-capitalist positions and expected both a social and economic revolution upon the Party gaining power in Germany in 1933.[33] Of the million members of the SA, many were committed to the Party’s official socialist program.[33] The leader of the Party’s paramilitary organization the SA, Ernst Röhm, supported a “second revolution” (the “first revolution” being the Nazis’ seizure of power) that would entrench the Party’s official socialist program and demanded the replacement of the nonpolitical German army with a Nazi-led army.[33]
Well. Huh. Ain’t that something?
But it says right there that Hitler changed his mind and decided to keep capitalism around! (surely that had nothing to do with the fact that socialism is a stupid economic failure and you can’t really build a super war machine with a broke ass economic system). I do believe I said repeatedly in that last post about how useful idiot idealist movements like OWS are always historically coopted by jerkoffs looking for more power.
Prior to becoming an anti-Semite and a Nazi, Adolf Hitler had previously served the Bavarian Soviet Republic from 1918 to 1919 where Hitler was elected Deputy Battalion Representative of his communist-led battalion and attended the funeral of communist Kurt Eisner – who was a German Jew – where Hitler wore a black mourning armband on one arm and a red communist armband on his other arm.[34
Wait a second… The National Socialists aren’t supposed to be on the left! Liberal academics said so!
As a Nazi, Hitler both in public and in private, opposed capitalism, Hitler regarded capitalism as having Jewish origins and accused capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class.[36]
Holy crap. That reads like an OWS manifesto. It’s like my hate mailers can’t even bother to check the links that they stick on here to show how smart they are!
However Hitler tactically took a pragmatic in-between position between the conservative and radical factions, in that he accepted private property and allowed capitalist private enterprises to exist as long as they obeyed the goals of the Nazi state but if a capitalist private enterprise resisted Nazi goals, he sought to destroy it.[31]
Let’s see, a socialist leader that punishes business that goes against his wishes and rewards those that do his bidding. Hmmm… Sound familiar? Want to drill for oil? Go screw yourself. Oh? Solyndra? Here’s another half a billion dollars. How much did GE pay in taxes recently?
Hanna said something to the effect that the socialist part of National Socialists was just a name, and it didn’t have anything to do with what they actually did. She went so far as to use the Democratic People’s Republic, i.e. North Korea as an example that a name doesn’t always fit the reality… However that is one dumbass argument when you realize that she’s talking about a communist dictatorship of a country where the people have no say, as opposed to the name of a political party, that was ELECTED. So they named themselves socialist, ran as socialists, campaigned as socialists, in the birthplace of the philosophy of socialism, where the highly educated populace was familiar with socialism, won as socialists, and then implemented socialist policies. But they were sooooo not socialist.
Hookay then.
But let’s just say that socialist is just a label. And you know how much modern liberals hate labels! So instead of the hateful label of socialist, let’s take a look at what their platform says! They ran on 25 concise points. Once again, let’s go to the source of all absolute correct knowledge in the world! WIKIPEDIA!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program
Let’s see… Aryan race blah blah blah. Bunch of racist nonsense… Not that we could ever possibly correlate racism with the left, except for the Black Panthers, the KKK, and the American Nazis all pitching in with OWS. Ah here we go. Let’s see how totally not socialist the National Socialists are. Because as I was told, there is soooooooo much evidence.
We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens.
So the state owes everybody a living… Never seen that on an OWS sign before.
The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all.
Collectivism?
Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
Pay my student loans! I bought a house I can’t afford! Bail me out!
In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
Evil military industrial complex. Take their stuff! BOOOOO!
We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
Nationalizing private assets? That sure sounds like capitalism to me.
We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
It isn’t fair that some percentage of something controls some other percentage of something! We are the 99%. Take their stuff! Woot!
We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
At age 68 Julia can retire and live without worry because Barack Obama like totally saved social security.
The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions.
Free education. Sound familiar?
The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
Michelle Obama thinks it is her business you are fat and we need a national health program. And they just tried to ban kids working on family farms.
All of those things sound eerily similar to things that my Hate Mailers post as being ideals.
To be fair, the Nazis had plenty of other points too, including a lot of crazy eugenic racist garbage. I’m sure the academics will cite that as the right wing part, ignoring that the eugenics movement was universally loved by left wing politicians around the world during the early part of the century. All of the pro-big government, total control types thought eugenics was awesome.
The eugenics movement was one of the most hideously evil things to ever exist. The communist/socialists/progressives ate it up. It gave them the “scientific” excuse they needed to implement controls on their populations. It was the global warming of the 1930s. But I digress.
So in conclusion the National Socialists totally weren’t socialists because modern socialist academics said they aren’t, even though their party platform and policies were distinctly socialist. Does that much cognitive dissonance hurt?
Wait, but I forgot about Borgs! Let’s get back to our latest Hate Mail.
The fact is, a tiny number of people control a huge amount of american resources. Poverty kills more people, even in america, than any other cause.
No, actually according to the CDC, heart disease in the number one killer, followed by cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease, stroke, and accidents. But don’t let reality hold you back.
The statistical violence in this situation is obviously about wealth distribution.
Wha huh pseudo academic made up sentence of what?
Politic how you like, but it’s a brute fact that 1.) Wealth is incredibly unequally distributed in America, leading to a rich nation with many poor citizens.
And so what? Some people have more stuff than you do, big freaking deal. Capitalism is such a horrible system that our poor people live better than the rich in most of the rest of the world.
2) Through many vectors, poverty causes death and distress to all involved.
Not really. The quality of living in America has gone up continuously. Most of the impoverished in America live in houses, have running water, heat, refrigeration, and their greatest health problem is that they can eat too much food and get fat. (a health issue almost unheard of in all of human history)
And even then if you consider yourself poor, because we live in America, there is no reason that you can’t improve your situation. There are plenty of people on here who have been poor who now are considered rich. I’ve been poor, then middle class, then back to poor, and now Barack Obama says I’m rich. We don’t have a caste system. Nearly everyone can improve their situation through effort.
But that’s soooo hard…
Also I assume when you say “100,000,000”, you’re referring to Stalin’s regime, right?
Nope. I was talking about left wing assholes in general, but I’ll break it down for you in a minute because you’re too stupid and apathetic to punch it into Google yourself.
That’s usually how that figure is bandied around. It’s actually larger than the entire population of Russia was at the time, so it’s got an amusing dimension to it. Obviously, Stalin was not only killing all his own people including himself, but also some invented ones too.
Actually the population of the Soviet Union was about actually 191 million in 1940. And actually you’ve already demonstrated no actual ability to look things up. And actually you are one dumb son of a bitch… Actually.
You know, it’s one thing to attribute every death that happened in the USSR over a given period to communists (that’s usually how you get these insane figures), but to add people to the population pool?
The problem with political movements based upon making people into assets of the states to be managed, is that sometimes you need to manage them to death. Marxist philosophy inevitably ends up with purges, camps, terror, mass killings, and genocide. Sure, there are some socialist places where it hasn’t happened… Yet.
But you are right about one thing. Sadly, these figures are insane. The insane part is that fools like you don’t know them, yet you are eager to turn your freedom over to the exact same types.
And since you guys love you some Wikipedia, let’s look at just those murdered, purposefully starved, or shipped off to camps to die of exposure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes
The Soviets take the cake, right off the bat having official records of executing over 800,000, with about 3 million dead after being sent to gulags and forced relocation. Deaths from purposeful famine are harder to track, with Stalin’s apologists saying that it was ONLY around 6 million with some estimates being way higher. However you lib bastards love you some Ivy League academics, and Yale puts that around 20 million.
However there aren’t good records for right around when the Bolsheviks murdered their way into power around 1917, but we’re talking small time there. The reds only executed something like 12,000 Cossacks. They called it decossackization.
The Great Purge had about 700K get bullets in the back of head. The numbers are fuzzy on how many died during torture or in NKVD custody. Stalin, being an overachiever, also executed around 100,000 priests and nuns. One time he took a vacation into Mongolia to kill another 30K Mongolians. This is all before the biggest war in history where Stalin really got his murder on. He let 150,000 Poles die in captivity.
Oh, but wait. There’s more. We can’t forget China! Now things get a little fuzzy here, because Mao really didn’t have time to slow down and record every single dead peasant. Officially, he was prepared to kill 50 MILLION people to institute his “reforms” but that was just boasting. The actual number was only a couple of million… Hey, sometimes you’ve got to break a few eggs.
But then Mao decided to get down to business and had the Great Leap Forward. Since you are all about having a government strong enough to maintain the redistribution of wealth, Mao decided to redistribute all of the food from the people he didn’t like to the people he did. Some people didn’t like this, so he executed two and a half million of them. 40 million dead later, China was on the road to the future, so Mao chilled out and only killed another couple million people who dared disagree after that.
Those are the big two, but some of the little guys punched above their weight class. Cambodia killed and starved a third of their population. There were mass killings by communists in Vietnam, North Korea, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany, but those guys were just icing on a murder sundae.
But of course this sort of thing is just symptomatic of any state that is powerful enough to own its own people. If they own you, they can do what they want with you. If they provide you with food, housing, and healthcare, they can also take those things from you if they feel like. And you stupid fuckers keep on begging for them to do it.
Still, if you consider the distribution of wealth, and the consequences of poverty, capitalist nations outstrip any regime in terms of statistical suffering.
Really? Fascinating. Who? You lying quisling sack of shit.
Worldwide today, 9.7 milion children die every year. So, if we extrapolate that back, we can say that capitalism has killed more *children* in the last ten years than Stalin could have killed if he’d set out to murder every person in Russia.
So when I said that communists have murdered 100,000,000 people in the last century by starving, executing, or freezing them to death in gulags, that doesn’t actually count, but when an African kid dies of malaria because angsty urban American liberals got DDT banned to protect bird’s eggs, that’s the fault of capitalism… Gotcha.
I know you believe it might economically go badly if you started doling out some of the money of the top 1%.
I’ve stated my philosophy clearly. Any government big enough to take everything away, will eventually take everything away. Your philosophy is screw them, I’m a greedy little lazy idiot, motivated by shame, so gimmie free stuff.
But to be honest, I think it would be hard to do worse than nearly ten million kids dying of easily preventable causes every year.
Would you like to compare the infant and child mortality rates of capitalist countries vs. socialist/communist/Marxist countries?
Let me get this right… If we forcibly confiscate the assets of the wealthy, and build the statist machine necessary to do it, that all powerful state won’t turn totally evil like all of the other ones before it, and they’ll take those rich guys money to give to a bunch of lazy OWS douchebags to pay off their student loans, so automatically 10 million children in 3rd world hellholes run by statist thugs, who are currently backed by the lefty socialists in the UN, will suddenly be cured by magic unicorns…
Borgie, even if OWS got every single thing on their wish list, and every single rich dude in America got shaken down tomorrow, and the government confiscated all of their assets, and before the economy imploded (because all of our rich guys said why bother?), it still wouldn’t do dick to help dying children in 3rd world hellholes.
Because you apathetic little parasites would just gobble up the 1 percent’s stuff with your free houses, and your free education, and your free internet access, and your free health care, and your free bullshit… Briefly, but then the money would be gone, and you’d still be an apathetic little parasite. But now since you’ve installed a government amoral and powerful enough to truly not give a shit, this time when you take to the streets they will just kill your ass.
You bitch about America at the protests, where our police handle you with kid gloves. You pose like little anarchist douchebags in your Guy Fawkes masks (my GOD! These people are ignorant of history!) throw bricks at the cops and destroy other people’s property, and then scream and cry about your civil rights being violated, all while demanding to be more like other countries that would just machinegun you in the streets and be done with it.
Hooray for hate mail!
As you guys know, I get a lot of hate mail, especially when I post anything that goes against the liberal groupthink. Last week I posted pictures of the Occupies’ May Day party. http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/a-legitimate-political-movement/
I didn’t even comment much. The pictures pretty much speak for themselves. It is a bunch of hoodlums throwing a temper tantrum and wrecking other people’s stuff, but check them out if you haven’t already.
However even posting unflattering pictures will rile up the stupid, and Hanna is pretty damn stupid. If you want to read the original exchange it is in the comments of the other thread, but I decided that she was entertaining enough (though she certainly is no nickwolf!) that she still deserved her own post. Her comments are in bold, my responses in the thread are in italics.
Perhaps they should act more like the teabaggers, and actually start stomping on people smaller than themselves? http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/10/rand-paul-supporter-stomps-on-woman.html
So the Occupies attempted to blow up a bridge, mailed fake anthrax, and committed several thousand property crimes last week, and Hanna’s response to show that the Tea Party was morally equivalent was how one protestor got shoved down at something that wasn’t a Tea Party event two years ago (when the Occupies were busy raping, overdosing, and shooting at the Whitehouse).
Wow. Pwned.
The left loves to play the moral equivalence card. That’s why their standard answer for every horrible thing Obama has done is “but George Bush did blah blah blah!” Yep. Gotcha. Heard you the first 8,000 times. Didn’t really like him either. It is never about something being right or wrong, just that your own wrong things are of similar wrongness to the other guy.
When they don’t have moral equivalence they try to manufacture some.
Uh-huh. And do you apply that same level of whiny self-justification to the OWS incidents you cite?
I’ve pointed this out before, but my hate mailers always call any disagreement “whiny”. Because of course the entire OWS movement is based upon being mad because somebody else has more stuff than you do, crying about fairness, throwing tantrums in the street, and demanding that you get free stuff. Obviously that’s not whiney at all.
On the other hand, wanting to keep your own stuff makes you a whiney little bitch.
I responded, and one of the things I said was this: Now here is the thing. My side gets accused of violence all the time. Ironically enough, we’re the side with the guns and the knowledge of how to use them. When we do get uppity, trust me, you’ll know.
But, Larry, every time your side has tried, you failed. Such as when your side attempted to evade taxing the rich in France in the 1780s, or when your side declared war on the United States in 1861 so you could continue to keep slaves, or when your side invaded Poland in 1939.
Heh. You mean when the populists started running people through the guillotine, when the Democrats fought to keep slaves, or when the National Socialists invaded Poland? Your grasp of political philosophy is apparently as good as your grasp on history.
Each and every time, right-wingers who thought they had the monopoly on violence and could use it to defend their privilege over others turned out to be dead, dead wrong.
Oh, I have no delusion that the right have a monopoly on violence. After all, it was the left that managed to murder over 100,000,000 of their own citizens in the last 100 years… But I’m sure it’ll be different this time.
And your guns and your knowledge of how to use them isn’t going to help you when you start something this time and get stomped, either.
Start something what? Are we going to round up undesirables and put them in camps? Oh… wait, when that happened in America it was done by your side.
You know, come to think of it, there have been other instances where underemployed young men were used as useful idiots to smash a bunch of windows and bully people. Last time they called it Kristallnacht.
Riiiight – you think the National Socia1ists were leftist because they used the word “Socia1ist” – and you accuse others of having a poor grasp of social philosophy?
No. I’m sorry, the name Nazi actually translates as Fluffy Puppy Rabbit Happy Fun Time Hug Party, but my German is rusty. Yes, dumbass, they were socialists. But they were only runners up compared to the commies. Now those assholes mechanized murder into something like farming.
But what do I know about the history and social movements of the 1930s? (regular readers are laughing at you right now, Hanna, not with you).
The national socialists—shockingly enough—were socialists. The main reason that era originally fascinated me is because it was a war of ideologies between the state owned individual and the individual owned state.
I find it highly ironic that the side that wants to grow a government enormous enough to take care of everything, control everything, regulate everything, provide everything, and crush everything thinks of themselves as freedom fighters, while they say the side that wants to make government smaller and less capable are dangerous statists… But I suppose that’s why people came up the term “useful idiot.”
Afterwards one of my regular posters put up the original Nazi party platform, which, minus the German specific stuff and some weird Aryan race garbage, sounds sort of familiar, including the state providing for everyone, getting rid of debt, taking the profits from different industries, communalization, national education, and national healthcare… Now where have I heard this stuff before?
The only thing more retarded than Jonah Goldberg’s bleatings are the morons who take him seriously.
I have never read a Jonah Goldberg book, however if I ever meet him, I will gladly buy him a drink, because anyone that causes lefties like you so much consternation deserves my thanks.
You’re just another right-wing apologist and dupe for elites who think they can continue to use violence to keep everyone else in line while they loot countries and exploit others. Same as the Blackshrts, same as the Confederates, same as the French Ancien Regime.
Dupe for the elites? Man, I’m going down on the liberal hate scale. Last year when I complained about paying 40 grand in taxes all you little wingbats were calling me “the elite” and snarling at me that I should be happy to pay my “fair share”.
As for your grasp of right vs. left, apparently anybody who is mean = right, and anybody you like = left. It is really interesting when you bring in political movements that predate the current right vs. left paradigm, and use that as some sort of justification. Yes, Hanna, the conquistadors and Genghis Khan were on my side too.
And just like them, you masturbate over fantasies of violence. And, just like them, you turn out to be no match for a democratic people.
I can’t say I masturbate over fantasies of violence, though I did spend a decade learning how to get really good at it. (violence, not masturbating, my gosh just imagine the chafing!)… Seriously lady, if my side was 1/10th as blood thirsty as you make us out to be, all of you fuckers would be dead before breakfast. But you’re not.
Meanwhile to justify your side’s childish temper tantrums you come up with one incident of assault from 2 years ago, which looks pretty insignificant when compared to the couple thousand felonies your side committed last week. Same reason that the media likes to assign us dochebags like Loughner and McVeigh, even when they don’t have anything to do with us. Because when you don’t have reality, run with narrative.
The American nazis and the communists have backed Occupy rather the Tea Party for a reason. You guys are fellow travelling useful idiots.
But wait! There’s more. Before Hanna showed up I had Rev. Bob try to throw down.
I hope you’re going to apply the same standards to the “pro-life” movement and the Tea Party. Stalking and killing abortion doctors, taking guns to political rallies, advocating the violent overthrow of an elected government…
So I responded to him too: Ahh, the good old moral equivalence argument. But the other kids were being bad too!
Stalk somebody, get prosecuted. Murder somebody, get prosecuted. Sounds simple.
Taking guns to political rallies? Not breaking any law. Newsflash. If you go to a political rally in a place like Utah or Texas, and it is a right wing rally, 1/2 of the audience are carrying firearms. What you and the media are calling advocating the violent overthrow of the elected government is probably what most of us refer to as the 2nd amendment. However, if somebody had actually committed conspiracy to commit violent acts against government officials, then bring charges and prosecute. Since this hasn’t happened… Huh… I wonder why. The only people I’ve seen talking about violence against the authority are the OWS types talking about killing the police. Go figure.
Jack Franz said: No one tried to blow up a bridge. FBI paid conspirators were successful in convincing a group of inbred ohioans to place packages of play-do on a bridge. Slight difference, and I never understand why the ridiculous parts of propaganda are sited as legitimate when they colour people who don’t agree with you.
No. They did try to blow up a bridge. They just sucked at it.
I really enjoyed writing this week’s episode. Half of it is from the game session last time (Night of Assassins), the other half is backstory I made up explaining what Makoto came from, and then putting the two together to show what kind of person he was today. It was sort of a writing experiment/short story, but is one of my favorite bits from Writer Nerd Game Night.
For those of you just tuning in, Makoto’s grandfather was from the lowest caste but worked his way up to being a legendary hero, however his father was a traitorous failure, and the sins of the father fall onto the son, which can be extra tough when you are born in the toughest, most militant bunch in an empire of militant tough guys.
Continued from: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/the-burning-throne-episode-25-night-of-assassins/
Picture from the L5R art tumblr. http://l5rart.tumblr.com/
LESSONS FROM A DOJO OF THE CRAB
Fourteen years ago.
“Your father was a failure. His actions shamed this dojo. If there was justice in this world, then his cowardly, eta-spawned line should have died with him. Your very existence has brought shame on our Clan.”
“Yes, Sensei,” the eight year old Crab answered, then he flinched as the hardwood staff slammed into his back.
“I did not tell you to speak!” the sensei shouted in his ear. “You are a wretched blight on this Clan. If it was not for your mother’s reputation I would kill you now and call it a training accident. It would save us all the trouble when you inevitably abandon your duty and leave your brothers to die!” The sensei struck the child again, knocking him over. “I trained your father and now I am to train you! I am insulted that they sent you to this dojo, but what else was your lord to do? You are too lazy to go to the Kaiu, too clumsy for the Hiruma, and too stupid for the Yasuki. Thus, you have become my burden. However, we both know you are not a real samurai, and when you give up, it will be proven to all.” He paused long enough to kick the child in the side. “Stand, you wretched eta pig dog.”
The Crab child got up, wiped the blood from his nose with one trembling hand, and continued staring at the back wall of the dojo. If he focused hard enough, he could survive this. He only had to make it until he could complete his gempukku, so six to ten years…
“A stubborn boy. No tears.” The sensei circled around him. “Very stubborn… Maybe I can drill some lessons into your cowardly eta head after all. Duty requires I try. First lesson—” The point of the staff jabbed into the child’s stomach, doubling him over. “Only a fool stands there and takes a beating. A Hida bushi is strong…” The staff bounced off the child’s back, knocking him hard against the floor. “But he is also quick to adapt. React without hesitation and fight, but do so pragmatically, to maximize your chances of victory,” he recited the lesson from memory, bored, not expecting the child to actually learn it.
The child’s face was pressed against the cold stone floor. The sensei’s sandals filled his vision. React. Fight. Win. Despite the terrible pain and the spreading bruises, the child rose.
“Did I give you permission to stand?” The staff swung in a wide arc, but this time the child stepped into it, lowering his shoulder, and he was very big for his age. The sensei had not expected that, and had only maintained a loose grip on the staff. It rebounded off the child and came flying back to hit the sensei in the nose.
The beating he received for his insolence was quickly forgotten, but the lesson would always remain.
Month of the Serpent, Shiro Tamori
The alarm had been sounded. The great bell was struck and the low pitched sound vibrated through the castle halls.
The rustle of rough cloth.
The movement of shadows in the next room.
Hida Makoto raised his hand to silence the Tamori House Guards. He pointed at the movement through the paper wall. A single bead of sweat rolled down the inside of his helmet. The shadows had heard the approaching clanks of armor and frozen in place. “Protect your lord!” he ordered, and then the tetsubo of Moshibaru Junaro ripped a gigantic swath through the wall, shredding paper and rending wood. “HIDA!” and the gigantic Crab warrior crashed through after it.
The black-clad assassins were ready and there was a flurry of movement as shuriken uselessly struck against heavy armor. The room was cloaked in flickering shadows, but Makoto crossed the space quickly to strike. A short sword was raised in a feeble attempt to block, but a red haze of blood splattered across the storeroom and the broken sword went bouncing away.
Chaos. Grey blades flashed, and Makoto roared as one point slipped past the plate on his thigh to pierce his flesh. Makoto swung and that assassin’s reward was to be ripped nearly in half.
Controlling his breathing, Makoto could feel the unnatural burning in his leg. He had been poisoned. Behind him, some of the Tamori House Guard had fallen from the shuriken. Dizzy, the Crab focused on finishing what he had started.
More shadows. Movement in the next room. The assassins had to be stopped. These walls were also paper, but they would be ready. As a Crab, the choice to attack was already made, but the lessons remained, and though handling the dead was a sin, Hida Makoto prided himself on being pragmatic. The dead ninja was not so heavy, and Makoto knew that he had made the right decision as he drove the corpse through the wall and let it absorb the poisoned throwing stars.
He painted the next room with blood.
Ten Years Ago
The dojo was miserably hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. The spring and fall brought rain, which caused extra discomfort in his heavy armor, but the Crab child did not mind. The blood of Osana-Wo, Fortune of Fire and Thunder was in his veins, and all weather was the same to him. His ability to withstand the elements made him particularly well suited for guard duty, which meant that other, more promising students could be freed up for more important lessons. It was as close to a compliment as the sensei had ever given him.
Being a pre-gempukku dojo guard was a joke, and all of the students knew it. His armor was old and heavy, awkward and unfitted. His daisho consisted of two wooden swords and the bamboo pole over his shoulder was a pale imitation of a tetsubo. Sometimes he would stand for hours, unmoving, watching a door to nothing important. The child accepted this as his lot in life, and was committed that no matter what happened, he would not fail. Regardless of what the duty was, it would be performed unflinchingly.
For how could a samurai who failed to perform even the smallest duty to the best of his abilities be expected to fulfill the important assignments for his lord? So the child became the finest student guard of abandoned storerooms in the history of the Mountain Shadows dojo. He promised the Fortunes that he would guard this door with the same intensity that he would someday lead a mighty Crab army against the Fortress of Fu Leng.
Sometimes the sensei would “forget” to send a replacement, hoping that at best he might freeze to death during the night, or at worst he could strike the child awake with his staff in the morning for dereliction of duty.
However, the child was never once caught sleeping, for another lesson had been learned.
Month of the Serpent, Shiro Tamori
Hida Makoto had borrowed the horse from a Tamori soldier who would no longer be needing it. The soldier had been unlucky enough to catch a poison shuriken in the throat. It was an unfortunate end to a bushi, so Makoto had promised the dead soldier’s ghost that he would return the horse in the morning, but right then he needed to get back to his men as quickly as possible.
It was unknown if the violence that had just washed through the palace had been felt by the Order of the Paper Lanterns, but from the audacity of the assassins, Makoto suspected that the Lanterns were in danger as well. The horse was not used to such a heavy rider, and nearly stumbled as Makoto yelled at the poor terrified animal to run faster. Citizens of Shiro Tamori had come out of their homes, roused by the alarms and shocked by the explosion that had destroyed the bell tower, and now they had to leap out of the way to keep from being run down by the angry Crab.
The house that had been provided to the Paper Lanterns came into view. Their banner still flew on the wall. He was spotted and the call went up. “The Nikutai returns!”
The horse reared as Makoto pulled back on the reins. It was a good thing that Moto Khano had been helping him with the fundamentals of horsemanship recently or that would’ve put him in the dirt. Makoto slid from the saddle, ignoring the pain from the sword wound on his leg. It was not deep and he’d stuffed some silk into the hole. He would tend to it once he knew the men were secure.
Several of the bushi were positioned there, all of them wary, positioned behind cover, with arrows knocked or swords drawn.
“Report!” Hida Makoto shouted as he limped through the gate.
Danjuro sheathed his katana and bowed quickly. “Two assassins, Nikutai. Unnatural creatures. We destroyed them. The shame sword is secure.”
The house that had been provided to the Order of the Paper Lanterns was extremely well lit for this time of night. Every lantern was in use, including the ones that had been purchased for the initiation ceremony. In addition peasant torches had been procured and set all along the interior of the courtyard. A bonfire burned in each corner.
He took in the extra light. “They were made of shadow?”
“Hai!” replied several of the bushi at once.
There had been rumors of such things on the Wall. “Foul beasts. Men given in to corruption.”
His second had come out of the house and ran down the path to meet him. The ronin Akimi appeared harried, but she was in her element. “Makoto-sama, your leg! I will call for—”
“It is nothing.” The monks could tend to it later. He had to see to his men first. No… They were Ide Todo’s men, Makoto corrected himself. To think of the Lanterns otherwise would be to claim an honor that was not his. He was merely a caretaker until their proper gunso returned. “What is our status?”
“Safe for now. Magatsu-sama called them Goju. They appeared from darkness, attacked, and disappeared back into the smallest of shadows. They were very powerful. We believe they came for the sword.”
Makoto nodded. Only a handful of them knew about the decoy. Akimi was one of them. “Is it safe?”
“It is, Makoto-sama. The Lanterns responded just as we’ve practiced.” Then her face grew solemn. “However, we failed our duty in part, and Ide Todo was injured.”
The words filled Makoto with dread and he thought of the poison that had felled Shimura. “How bad?”
“The wound is not so serious.” Then she looked away, embarrassed. “He will be fine, but I am shamed for allowing—”
Makoto held up his hand to stop her. “Akimi-san, the Lanterns repelled corrupted shadow assassins. Our superior is still alive and you kept a powerful nemurani from falling into evil hands. There is no shame in such things.”
Akimi did not seem convinced. “Would you care to inspect?”
“Show me.” Makoto winced as he limped up the garden path. Despite having shrugged off the effects of the assassin’s poison, the remainder in his system was making his stomach churn. At least he hoped it was the aftermath of the injury and not fear concerning the next question he had to ask, for to fear was sin. No... Makoto decided that the feeling was surely from the poison, nothing more. He took a deep breath. “Casualties?”
“Some injuries, but all the Lanterns are alive and accounted for.”
Suddenly, the pain in his stomach lessened. The poison must be wearing off. Makoto turned and took one last look at the compound’s walls. In the distance, the shattered remains of the once great bell tower could be seen, looming ragged over the city.
“Then we fared far better than the Tamori.”
Six Years Ago
The young man was thankful that he was wearing the full suit of armor, for the mempo covering his face concealed the burning of his cheeks and the hard clench of his teeth. Only his eyes were visible, but apparently the anger in them was obvious. It was one thing to insult his honor, he was used to it, but his family was not to be insulted. His younger brother Kenzan looked over at him and shook his head, signaling that it would be best if he held his tongue.
He was the oldest, and two of his siblings were now assigned to the same dojo. However, they had a different father, and their father was a hero, not a traitor to the Clan, thus they were treated with far more respect. In fact, Kenzan was a prodigy, already a favorite of the teachers, brilliant with word or blade, with a quick mind and remarkable grasp of tactics. He was destined to be a general. Little sister was not so talented with words or strategy, but she was the most feared combatant of her age group, to the point that even the older students were scared to spar against her.
However, despite their martial prowess, Kenzan’s team had just been outmaneuvered and defeated during the first day of the annual winter combat exercises, and now the sensei was berating him for their failure. There were two groups of fifty students, both tasked with defending an objective and taking their enemy’s, which usually turned into the two groups of Crab in the mud, ruthlessly beating each other with heavy sticks. The combat training was as brutal as possible, stopping just short of death or permanent maiming, but only because none of the teachers wanted to explain to the Clan Champion why they were expending future soldier’s lives uselessly, but many limbs had been broken, and a group of monks were kept very busy treating both wounds and frostbite.
The student was present in the command area as his younger brother’s yojimbo. He had seen some of the mistakes Kenzan had made in the positioning of his forces, but he had not been allowed to speak. Kenzan was brilliant, but he was not perfect, and he had come to understand his mistakes as he’d explained what had happened. Now the sensei was trying to teach his prize student a valuable lesson.
“So, you are saying that it was your fault the line broke, Kenzan?”
“That is correct, sensei.” Kenzan pointed to the map. “I assumed that Kuriko would move his troops up this ravine to attack us directly, but that was only a feint. Instead, he sent a group of skirmishers to flank us. I was unprepared to respond and he took our flag. I accept full responsibility for this failure.” Kenzan hung his head.
“No!” The sensei knocked all of the pieces off of the table. “You are a fool for saying so.” The young man took a step forward, but Kenzan subtly stopped him with a hand on his armor. The sensei did not notice the terrible breach of etiquette. “Learn from this, Kenzan. You are the commander, and thus you must seem infallible. You did not make an error, someone else did.”
“I do not understand…”
“You are nobility. You will lead a Clan army someday. Your army must believe that you can do no wrong, they must believe in your wisdom, they must trust in you completely. You are not one of them. You must be above them. Better than them. As the commander, all the glory of victory is yours, but only if your clan champion requires it is the ignominy of the defeat. If your champion needs you to fight again, then you cannot afford the luxury of being a failure. If this was real life and I was your lord, I would deny your request for seppuku, because you are still my best general. This battle will be fought again tomorrow, and your men cannot enter battle believing you are fallible. Pick someone else to blame for the loss.”
Kenzan was shocked. “But that… I can’t—”
“Choose one of your men, proclaim their failure, and have them flogged as an example,” the sensei suggested. He looked at the young man, seeing the anger in his eyes for the first time. “This one should do.”
“What? No! The only reason it didn’t turn into a complete route was because my brother faced four of them in combat alone and won!”
“And this was while he was supposed to be protecting you, was it not? There is your reason. Listen to me, boy! Our people live in an eternal state of war. Our well-trained generals are precious few, but our simple soldiers are many and far more easily replaceable. Remember, Kenzan, the glory belongs to the commander, not the soldiers. Have him whipped or I will replace you with a commander that understands the way of things.” The sensei stormed away, confident that his orders would be obeyed.
He looked to Kenzan, who had gone white with fear. “The sensei is a fool. Too long in the school and not on the Wall has clouded his mind. That is not why we fight,” the young Crab said as he removed his helmet. “But you must fulfill your duty… I am expendable. The blame will be mine alone.”
“This isn’t right.”
“No, it is not… I will call for a whip.”
That was the most bitter lesson of all.
Month of the Serpent, Shiro Tamori
The house had taken severe damage, and at first Makoto had thought that had been the Goju’s doing, but then he realized that the path of destruction followed a clear trajectory. Several walls had been destroyed, an interior support hung torn in half, then out into the courtyard where two wooden pillars had been turned to splinters and a tree was lying on its side, then the trail terminated in a fresh crater with a very large boulder in it.
“Magatsu, flinging rocks I take it?” Makoto asked Akimi. She simply nodded. “He does enjoy Earth becomes Sky.” And to think he had been worried about the Tamori being upset because he had knocked Braga through a wall during sparring practice. He sat down on the steps with a grunt.
Akimi clapped her hands and one of the monks scurried over to inspect Makoto’s injury. He had made certain that everyone else had been tended to first, so only now was it his turn. He winced as the monk rolled back the bloody silk. A simple kiho and he would be ready to get back to work, though the monk would probably insist on a ritual purification. So many in the Empire became squeamish around you when your armor was soaked with blood. Makoto supposed that Crab were simply used to it enough not to worry too much.
“What is Buwa doing to that rock?”
“I believe he is carving a haiku on it,” Akimi answered. “And no, I do not know why.”
Makoto just shook his head, but from her account the Yoritomo had conducted himself well. Even Braga had proved to be surprisingly courageous and taken a blow meant for Machio. Makoto would speak to each of the bushi individually and be sure to let them know their actions were recognized and appreciated.
Akimi pointed at his breastplate. “There is a throwing star stuck in your armor.”
“Well… Huh…” He glanced down at the shuriken. “Didn’t notice that one. Sharp little bastards. Thank you, Akimi-san. With my luck I would probably have went to remove my armor later and accidentally cut my thumb off.” He yanked it out and examined the poisoned razor. “Souvenir.”
The ronin’s report had been thorough. This was only the Lantern’s second test as a unit, but they had performed far better than the last. The men had done exactly as ordered. They had adapted quickly and filled their responsibilities, manned their posts, and watched over their brothers. From Fubatsu being prepared to murder Magatsu should he fall, to Chiyoko’s swiftness with the katana, even to the men that had held their assigned posts while their friends fought within earshot, the Lanterns had done well.
Magatsu appeared in the courtyard, looking haggard beneath his face paint. Makoto greeted him warmly. “Kuni-sama, I see you redecorated. Was the Dragon architecture not to your taste?”
“I felt we could use more windows, brother.”
The urge to simply hold his tongue, to let Shimura die through simple inaction was great… But it was not honorable. “The Tamori have need of your wisdom.” And he told Magatsu of the new daimyo’s poisoning.
The terrifying shugenja simply nodded. “I will serve.”
The monk was done praying over his leg, so Makoto stood up. The ritual cleaning could wait. “Akimi, I must go back to the castle. When things have calmed down, we will gather the men and go over our reactions to see what we could have done better. Mistakes will be corrected. Shortcomings will be addressed. If we are to face more supernatural foes, we must prepare ourselves…” Makoto looked to his second and could see she was eager to serve, as were all the rest of the men. Ide Todo was not a petty master, so nor should be his officers. They led through an example of discipline and courage. “You have done very well. I am pleased and I am impressed. Today’s glory belongs to the bushi of the Paper Lanterns. My only regret is that I was not here to witness it.”
Akimi beamed with pride, and then quickly tried to recover her face. “Thank you, Nikutai.” She bowed deeply.
Makoto returned the respectful gesture. “Carry on.”
His sensei had been wrong about so many things.
#
To be continued next week, with a really cool Steve Diamond story called Proper End of a Bokken. Where we attempt to teach Ide Todo how to defend himself. http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/the-burning-throne-episode-27-the-proper-end-of-a-bokken/
I keep hearing people say that Occupy Wall Street is a legitimate political movement…
They just want “fairness”.
The violent acts are from a handful of “bad apples”.
Sure, a couple of days ago they mailed fake anthrax to banks and tried to blow up a bridge, but those people don’t represent the movement…
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi both say that OWS is a legitimate movement.
To celebrate the holiday that was taken over by Communists, the same people who murdered over 100,000,000 of their own citizens over the last century, OWS threw a party.