Gammas, Voxes, and Drooling Vegetables

Fragmentary Diatribes XII

I. Gamma Radiation

In the ongoing style war between Christians and Nietsczheans, someone alerted Vox Day, who brought the hammer of the Social Sexual Hierarchy down on ol’ F.W.’s head. Nietszche is a Gamma, a nerd, a Very Smart Boy unable to actually compete in the world of men. He’s not worth engaging with, because Gammas never are.

Nietzsche didn’t just become a lunatic after his famous public breakdown in 1889. His intellectual abilities were already being significantly affected by his syphilis when he published his first work, The Birth of Tragedy, in 1872. His philosophy, such as it is, is quite literally crazy.

The last eleven years of his life, Nietzsche spent in an incoherent madness, crouching in corners and drinking his urine. The most productive year of his life had been immediately prior to the psychotic break.

The syphilitic lack of “inhibition as brain tissue is destroyed” is readily apparent in most of Nietzsche’s work, which is why only Gammas are inclined to take it seriously, some poor souls to the point of accepting it as quasi-Gospel.

-Vox Day, “When Gammas Cry”

This is a common attack, and honestly, it’s low-hanging fruit. Nietzsche did spend the last eleven years of his life in pee-drinking madness, and this is commonly attributed to syphilis.¹ Separating Art from Artist isn’t a hard sell, but separating Philosopher from Philosophy is. If you can have good philosophy and a miserable existence, well, of what value is the good philosophy?

And in my attempts to read Nietzsche over the years, I admit the Screedy Nerd vibe is hard to ignore. I even have as a Note in my Kindle copy of Beyond Good and Evil: “Nietzsche: the original Basement Boy”. You may not like what Vox is saying here, but he’s not pulling it out of his ass.

Which is why the effective response, the intellectually honest response, is to do as John Carter has done and bite the Gamma bullet.

So, was Nietzsche a gamma male incel? Was he a loser and a nerd?

Of course he was. Vox is absolutely correct about this.

Christians will usually follow up the gamma male incel attack by noting the absurd contrast between Nietzsche’s lived reality, as a frail neurasthenic with a terminal case of oneitis who could be sent into days of migraines by a chance encounter with a caffeinated beverage, and the concept of the Ubermensch he preached in his writings, most notably in his very strange novel? prose poem? mental breakdown? Thus Spake Zarathustra. By the same token we might note that Virgil was no Aeneas. The character created by the artist is not the artist; if the artist was the character, he’d be too busy running around doing heroic character things, not hunched over in his scriptorium scribbling away with ink-stained fingers.

-John Carter, “The Prophet of the Twentieth Century”

It’s a long essay, and I invite you to read it in full, as if nothing else, it’s a good example of Agreeing and Amplifying. We can’t brush off the facts of Nietzsche’s life, therefore, run with them. And based upon my reading of his work, I will agree that he seems less of a philosopher and more of a poet writing in a madman prophet role. If someone in a Lovecraft story, having beheld the cruel universe in all its terrible sublimity, set down a manifesto of his operations, it would read entirely like Nietzsche’s work. We win no plaudits by lying or evasion. The Truth will set you free.

II. Socio-Sexual Slap Fights

Speaking of ol’ Vox, and the Social-Sexual Hierarchy in general, I have a few very basic principles related to them that I’d share with you. Call them the Two Laws:

1. The SSH is a set of observations on male behavior in groups, and useful to that extent only. These greek letters are not final statements about your soul and value as a person. They are simply aggregate observations: groups have a leader, the leader has higher status, women tend to like men with higher status. That’s it. You can’t act like an Alpha, you have to actually lead men successfully in some way. Acting decisively and with assumed leadership will be of benefit to you, but so will learning to shut the fuck up and take orders.

2. Anyone who talks at length about their place on it is lower than they think. You can call this a corollary to the first rule. You shouldn’t make a big deal over whether you’re a Sigma², or whether you’ve overcome your “Gamma tendencies”. No one cares. Make use of the observations, consider whether there’s a gap between your desires and your reality, and change behavior accordingly, and see what happens. Let the nerds debate.

I would extend this to most forms of Internet Discourse. One of the Dumbest things people do online is to justify themselves to strangers on the Internet. People who read Vox Day seem to suffer from this extensively. They’re constantly trying to argue with him, when every word he has published indicates that he has no interest in being drawn into debate with people he considers his intellectual inferiors. He will not be nice; he will not be fair; he will call you a Gamma if you are long-winded and a retard if you aren’t. As with the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy, it is best to read the things Vox has written, take the ideas that seem useful and true to you, and ignore the rest. You aren’t going to convince him the Moon Landing was Real.³ He’ll decide if he thinks that it was.

And you might notice, such is true of … every single other person on the Internet. No one responds well to things they think are stupid. No one is going to change their mind upon reading a wall of text that someone else shoves in their face. Ideas are freely taken and freely used, and sometimes sold well. They can’t be shoved, not over a modem.

III. The Sleepy Joe Panic of 2024

Joe Biden is a joke and always has been: an Old, Mad, Blind, Despised, and Dying King:

Joe Biden first ran for the presidency in 1988, after having spent 16 years in the Senate. He ran again in 2008 before fixing his wagon to Obama’s star. His Senate career is the definition of Moderate Democrat - liberal, but not interestingly so - the sort of man who opposed school busing and supported Amtrak. He was tough on crime - heavily involved in the creation of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which inlcuded the Federal Assault Weapons Ban and the Violence Against Women Act - until required to aver that position, which he did. He wrote the law that created the office of Drug Czar - a position that sounds powerful but is not. He voted against authorization for the 1991 Gulf War, for the Iraq War in 2003 and against the surge in 2007. He voted against Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court, but did not support Anita Hill enough to satisfy the left, to the point of apologizing to Hill in 2019.

The pattern that emerges is nothing, emptiness, void. Biden has no firm position except the one he is espousing now. His instincts are aimed at the line he can get away with, and his instincts are strong. No better expression of our Political Establishment could be written in fiction. He is Political Man, a ward heeler made good.

No one ever took Biden seriously; they only pretended to, same as they pretended George Bush or Mitt Romney were History’s Greatest Monsters, because that was the play; that was the job. So why’re they throwing him over now?

I didn’t watch the debate. I don’t care. The only reason that could compel me to the polls in November is the idea that Donald Trump’s second administration won’t charge headfirst into a a nuclear exchange with Russia smeared with Apache war paint and the phasers set to Go Fuck Yourself.⁴ But I’ve seen enough of the Vegetable over the last four years to know he’s a Vegetable. Everyone with eyes can see it. Some people don’t want to admit it because the illusion was profitable to them, or dispensing with the illusion painful.

So, if the whole media is announcing that Sleepy Joe is everything his enemies have been saying he is, it’s because of one of two reasons:

1. The bottom is out of the tub. There is literally not enough Adderall to keep his geriatric ass functional anymore. The Bill has come due. The Black Bird is fake. Nothing for it but to pick the party up, dust the party off, and start all over again. Sure, it’s desperate, but that’s just another way of saying “bold”, and when you’re the Democrats, “bold” means positive headlines. This is History, my Fellow Americans.

2. The ol’ Debate Rope-a-Dope. Back in 2012, Mittens Romney made Barack Obama look like the empty suit he is in the first debate. Then Barack leaned on the moderators or sneaked the test answers or gave a shit (maybe all three), and gave the cameras a performance adequate enough for the Stenographers to proclaim he was Back, Baby, and the first debate was Irrelevant Now. Maybe they think they can pull that off again. Maybe they gave him sugar pills last night and they’ll try the real stuff for the next debate, then the Narrative can be set accordingly.

Which is it? Fuck if I know. Maybe both. Trump liked to talk about how he set up Two Ways to Win, No Way to Lose. Or maybe that was Scott Adams analyzing Trump. I’ve read enough of The Art of the Deal to know he likes Having Options. Well, Maybe the Donkey Party does, too. We’ll try to give Ol’ Puddin’ Head a Redemption Arc, and if it doesn’t work, pick up the Red Courtesy Phone to Sacramento. And if neither work and the BOM wins, well, we can spend four years saying it’s all Joe Biden’s fault for not bowing out sooner. I can practically read the asides in post-election WaPo editorials now.

The Game is the Game, and it’s Play or Get Played.

1. This has been disputed by some, but it’s the legend, and Nietzsche was all about legends. His symptoms don’t not fit the diagnosis.

2. There’s a lively debate about whether Sigmas are even real. Everyone who engages in it diminishes themselves. It’s just an idea, based on observations that Lone Wolf types are also found among men. It’s not a mold to shove yourself into.

3. I don’t know if he actually thinks it wasn’t, but he kicked that idea around on his blog for a while a few years ago.

4. Yeah, that’s right: the Republicans are the Peace Party now, and the Democrats the bloodthirsty warmongers. It’s the 60’s all over again.