The Passion of James Valliant's Criticism, Part V

[Selene]

Gentlemen:

Never underestimate the power and perfidity of human stupidity.

Glad to have been naively away from the movement.

Hell, I would approach the Devil if he would grant me an audience, but I would believe the two P's

would have a significant degree of defensiveness merely by my presence on only this forum.

Adam

[Rich Engle]

Ah, this has been a long campaign, but goodness will prevail.

Maybe we ought to just leave Objectivist Succubus James Valliant alone for awhile.

Why? Because he can finish his next book. I assume this is still as announced, a debunking of the Old Testament or the New Revised or WTF ever.

This is an excellent excercise in futility. Don't get me wrong, I know the ins and outs of Bible world quite well, and surely you don't see me running about with one.

But that is not the point. If he is, in fact, taking on this project, he's doing something worse than Quixote-ism. It is a pointless exercise to anyone, other than himself.

And that is the worst thing about him, it appears. There are a lot of things you can call that, but in show business we use phrases that even I will not share in polite company. Let's just refer to it as "shameless self-promotion."

Oh, I so hope he is doing that book. For one thing, it will keep a monkey occupied, and that is always good. For two, it will make for a wonderful fiasco when he rolls it out. If I were working on such a project, I would know that there is only one hinge-pin, angle, ballywick...you would have to explode with controversy. This is the "there is no such thing as bad publicity" theory, which is valid but replete with limitations.

One of which, in this case, is that the man is simply an awful writer; he is pedantic and accusatory, and above all, a non-innovator. He is no more than like when you go see a bad impressionist, or tribute band. I have never seen him poise a single truly unique idea. I have never seen him inspire. I have never seen him share wisdom.

So all in all, it would be a good thing if he is sequestered, writing his next opus magnus.

I think it is telling that he, clearly, has a sensitive spot about Nathaniel's "My Years With Ayn Rand," and I think I know why: because that book was incredibly well-written...memoir/novel/memoir, whichever way NB cares to describe it. It is a great summer read, and nothing JV generates will ever be taken to the beach. Well, I mean hopefully...

rde

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Look at this crap from bonehead James Valliant:

I had nothing to do with mentions of PARC at Wikipedia. I have no idea what those designations Neil used mean.

The designations Neil mentioned are:

Pelagius1

IP160

These are the alias names using James Valliant's IP on Wikipedia.

Let me be the first to say it as this is—and has been—my opinion ever since I read PARC:

James Valliant is a bald-face liar.

If anyone believes his lies, they deserve what they get.

Furthermore, he is in excellent company with Objectivist Liar Lindsay Perigo.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

I gotta agree. Mr. Valliant's latest lies, in their unbounded foolishness and desperation, insult the intelligence of the reader.

Cross-post of my latest on SOLOP.

Here, as noted by Mr. Scherk, is the online blunder committed by Mr. Valliant yesterday.

It only took him 7 minutes to catch it, but it left a trace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=296399482

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)

Jump to: navigation, search

Revision as of 19:06, 14 June 2009 (edit)

72.199.110.160 (talk)

(→Hey there)

← Previous edit

Line 80:

Pelagius1, are you by any chance the Pelagius who posts (or used to post) on Hatrack? Or on AI Jane? Just wondering. -[[user:Lisa|Lisa]] ([[user talk:Lisa|talk]]) 14:28, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

: Sorry you had to wait so long, but, no, I don't think so. It's just a great name, from a certain philosophical point of view.[[special:Contributions/72.199.110.160|72.199.110.160]] ([[user talk:72.199.110.160|talk]]) 12:04, 14 June, 2009.

Current revision as of 19:13, 14 June 2009 (edit) (undo)

72.199.110.160 (talk)

(→Hey there)

Line 80:

Pelagius1, are you by any chance the Pelagius who posts (or used to post) on Hatrack? Or on AI Jane? Just wondering. -[[user:Lisa|Lisa]] ([[user talk:Lisa|talk]]) 14:28, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Mr. Valliant may prefer to blame it on his meat puppet. Or on his sock puppet.

Whatever.

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

I see there is more evasive crap from Valliant.

You, sir, are the only one whom I can really count on to fabricate at the drop of a hat, so ignoring your authority on such matters should not be done lightly. Certainly not as lightly as we routinely dismiss the substance of your claims and the bizarre assumptions of your "questions."

I seriously doubt that even you actually think Dr. Peikoff would sign something I authored as his own, but I hesitate to call you a liar. It is just possible that you are no better than the likes of a UFO conspiracy crackpot who could pass a lie detector test about his various "convictions."

On the other hand, after someone calls me a liar he should not expect any more answers.

But know that your attention has not gone unnoticed, and that the Byzantine efforts that others always seem go through on my behalf are truly flattering to me. I also deeply appreciate that your posts almost invariably yield a rich harvest of fiction, and mirth.

Getting this guy to answer a simple question is like pulling chicken teeth. (They don't exist.)

Valliant yaps and yaps, but says nothing of substance.

The only good thing about the barking of junkyard dogs is that they can only bark in the junkyard.

No one else will have them.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

Even after all this time, it amazes me how contentless most of Jim Valliant's utterances are.

Robert Campbell

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Oh, yes. I forgot.

Here is another boneheaded assumption by the boneheaded James Valliant I had missed:

While the debate over PARC has aged with the book, interest in Rand has dramatically increased lately. . . See, many of our friends have worried that the wave of new Rand readers being born out there would be poisoned with the worst deceptions of her critics.

While it is refreshing to know that Valliant finally acknowledges that next to nobody is talking about PARC (I presume that this is what an "aging debate" means in Valliant-speak), the idea of him and his supporters trying to control the minds of "new Rand readers being born out there" shows a level of alienation on a primary perception level that is breathtaking in a person who claims to know Rand's philosophy. This posture is simply disconnected from reality. Literally. It's loony-farm stuff.

Setting aside (for the moment) the total boneheadedness and outright lies in PARC, let's look at a couple of simple facts that tell an interesting story about Valliant's alienation. First, let's look at the "dramatically increased" "new Rand readers being born out there" (to use his own words).

How many are there? According to ARI:

In 2008, total sales of Ayn Rand's books (net sales in English, all editions) were 825,000.

According to a consultation I just did, Atlas Shrugged is No. 75 in the top 100 books being sold on Amazon. Today is June 14, 2009.

That's a hell of a lot of new readers.

Now let's look at the efforts of James Valliant and supporters to keep this huge number of new readers of Ayn Rand "being born out there" from being "poisoned with the worst deceptions of her critics." Here is a screen-print I just took of the poll that was set up on SLOP on June 8 to try to destroy Barbara Branden and show the credibility of PARC (and help alert the mass of new readers to the "poison").

In about seven days, there has been 22 whole people who have voted in this poll and it has garnered 478 views, most of which are likely to be the voters themselves and a few lone souls like me who even bother to look at this stuff. Don't forget that this poll appears on the front page of SLOP 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

By any standard you wish to use, 850,000 to 22 is quite a jump. But let's be fair. Let's divide 850,000 by 52 (the 52 weeks in a year to compensate for only one week of the poll). We come to about 16,346.

That's over 16,000 to 22.

If we are looking at simple reach, that's a cream. A wipeout. A total trouncing by reality.

And let's not forget that only 9 of these 22 voted for the two "trash the Brandens" options in the poll.

Is it possible that these 9 people have managed to get the word out to even a small slice of those 850,000 new Rand readers from last year and the several hundred thousand new Rand readers this year? Maybe these 9 people were the ones who caused an increase of more than a million new Rand book sales since last year?

Heh.

These alienated souls think they are "defending Rand's honor." With respect to this million plus new readers, these readers don't need anyone to defend Rand's honor. They already decided that point with their pocketbook.

To be vulgar, what these 9 hapless half-wits are doing is about as effective as a fart in a shit factory.

(Sorry. Since I am talking about SLOP, this uncharacteristic lapse into vulgarity just popped out...)

Or in the former words of Objectivist Liar Lindsay Perigo about the impact of himself and Solo Passion (including PARC) on the Objectivist movement:

"Whole lotta' shakin' going on."

Michael

[Neil Parille]

Michael,

PARC is #254,727 on Amazon. The last time it was reviewed was over 7 months ago.

The Passion of Ayn Rand is #113,097.

The recently released Objectively Speaking collection of interviews with AR is #63,312.

Amazon doesn't report any books citing PARC. There are 28 books that cite Passion.

So to the extent that the sales of Atlas are drawing people to interest in Rand's life (which doesn't seem the case, though I don't know of Amazon's numbers re these books prior to the GEC), it isn't drawing many people to Valliant's opus.

-Neil Parille

Edited June 15, 2009 by Neil Parille

[Rich Engle]

Idea: Give away cheap conducting baton with every copy of PARC.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I want to quote myself from above with a small change.

Objectivist Liar Lindsay Perigo snarls and growls and cuts loose with hyena-like heehaw screeches, but says nothing of substance.

The only good thing about the barking of junkyard dogs is that they can only bark in the junkyard.

In Perigo's case, they let him on other venues at times, but they always keep him on a leash and tightly confined. And he usually just wags his tail and barks only a little at those times. Definitely no snarling...

Michael

[Selene]

Folks, I get these from Atlasphere, I thought this was well put and apropos:

"Ayn Rand's Philosophy at a Crossroads

And there are "internal" problems as well. There are rancorous, often petty, debates within the movement that annoy and discourage newcomers to the philosophy. If self-professed defenders of reason resort to personal insult attacks, instead of reasoned arguments, against those with whom they disagree, it doesn't say much for the success of the philosophy in action.

And if, as some argue, Objectivism is a finished product with no room for deeper understanding and application of its principles, then there's little opportunity for others to help deepen and enhance the movement — providing another disincentive for newcomers.

So we confront two parallel problems:a world-wide crisis of need for solutions, and a movement with solutions that is divided and suffering diminished effectiveness within itself."

http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/09061...-free-minds.php

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

There is a very odd thing going on at SLOP. I don't know if you noticed, but several statements by the hapless Valliant tag team on Wikipedia in the backstage comments are now gone. Some of the passages dealt with things like Pelagius1 claiming that she and she along (if it was a she) is responsible for all edits made on Wikipedia under the Valliant household IP, and then trying to push the Wikipedia editors into treating the total innocence of James Valliant as a verified fact.

To me, these deletions are neither here nor there. This episode has already (and rightfully) exhausted the patience of several of the Wikipedia editors, so it is entirely reasonable for them to take out the garbage, so to speak, and delete some of the more frivolous and boneheaded stuff.

What is odd is that, since these statements are no longer present, they are treated as if they did not exist at all and this proves something in the sense of casting bonehead Valliant in a more favorable light. Now folks want to play make-believe grant him some sort of half-assed deniabilty. Bonehead Valliant certainly ain't saying nothin' about 'em, either. He's benefiting. Or at least he acts like he thinks he is.

Such inferences aren't just barking by the junkyard dogs, either. Grande Dame of St. Referee Ellen Stuttle is blowing her umpire's whistle from here to Kingdom come based on this.

But I saw these statements. I know they existed because I read them when I first starting reading all that material. (Who knows? Maybe they are still up and I just can't find them anymore.)

I look at all this stuff and just wonder how rational people can take someone like Valliant seriously.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Even more crap from Vallaint.

Bonehead Valliant threatens William Scherk:

So, no, please, please never write me again, Mr. Scherk. . . . let's just keep all of our exchanges public from now on. This is no promise I will waste the time to reply, just a warning that I am familiar with the Stalking Laws and such.

He obviously must mean something like spamming the living daylights out of Wikipedia as a meatpuppet (Wikipedia's charming term for spammer-editor) and comments to the Wikipedia editors like the following:

The principle is clear and simple: any use of Nathaniel or Barbara Branden in Wikipedia must be qualified by an accompanying citation or reference to "The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics."

I don't know about that part concerning "stalking laws and such," but at least bonehead Valliant shows practical knowledge of stalking.

Michael

[Rich Engle]

Yeah, well one way or the other, good look attempting a frontal assault on WSS.

Have fun with that, fuckers.

rde

hi, bill...

[Robert Campbell]

Michael,

Mr. Valliant does seem to be getting a free pass at SOLOP.

But there is a lot of confusion in that thread, not least because of statements by Mr. Valliant that are cryptic and obscure even by his customary standard.

Frankly, some of them read like products of disorientation.

I'm going to try to sort some issues out in another post over there.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Michael,

Mr. Valliant does seem to be getting a free pass at SOLOP.

But there is a lot of confusion in that thread, not least because of statements by Mr. Valliant that are cryptic and obscure even by his customary standard.

Frankly, some of them read like products of disorientation.

I'm going to try to sort some issues out in another post over there.

Robert Campbell

Medication? It could be affecting him.

"Stalking laws"? WSS lives in Canada. I doubt if JV could touch him with that there on the basis of emails. You and Neil aren't giving him a free pass. I've not engaged him and don't care to immerse myself in that Wikipedia morass just for starters. Ever since Neil ran over his whole book with a thresher, I've put him and it so far behind me I don't even want to go back to Amazon and put up my new review. I'm interested in steak, not carrion.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

It saddens me to say this, but what we are witnessing (in addition to all the other schism crap) is one of the reasons I would never want a dyed-in-the-wool ortho-Objectivist in political power. Give me a good old-fashioned corrupt politician any day of the week.

If one of these dudes ever gets his hands on real power, we can expect the following based on many, many acts by ortho-Objectivists that are on record for any and all to see thanks to the Internet:

1. Constant rewriting of history.

2. Gross manipulation of authority.

3. Outright lying to the public practiced as a moral value.

4. Never answering uncomfortable direct questions with a direct response unless it is smarm, intimidation, cussing or moral outrage.

5. Strong formation of cliques.

6. Scapegoating people or groups to the point of bigotry.

7. Anonymous vandalism attacks on public sources of information, including attempts to skew the results of polls and surveys.

And on and on and on.

Granted that one of the tenets of Objectivism is non-initiation of force. But I have seen too much in life (and even in this small subcommunity these last few years) to believe that this will remain in the souls of people who practice the above. I believe more in Lord Acton's observation: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Incidentally, on the Wikipedia entry of Lord Acton, there is a very interesting part of the paragraph where this quote comes from (Essays on Freedom and Power, p. 364): "There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

In my judgment, a dyed-in-the-wool ortho-Objectivist in political power would sell out the basic tenets of Objectivism the moment he or she feels sanctified (Objectivism-wise) by office. I believe such a person would become a very, very dangerous person.

Michael

[Reidy]

A straw in the wind for ARIologists to contemplate: the latest printing of We the Living, with an intro by Peikoff, identifies him as her "philosophical heir" after more than 20 years as her "intellectual heir."

[Robert Campbell]

Brant,

The "free pass" for Jim Valliant has been coming from Ellen Stuttle, specifically.

At least part of her defense of Mr. Valliant is based on a simple mistake (she missed an important statement by WSS about Pelagius1's single solitary edit to an article).

I've posted about Holly Valliant's alleged responsibility for all (most?) of IP160 and Pelagius1's capers.

We'll see whether there is any response.

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

Robert,

JV is coming across more and more like a thug, which seems to be a trial lawyer default. PARC was a mugging cum prosecutor's brief. The initial credibility of PARC--what there was of it--came from the Rand material and the fact it would take a tremendous amount of time and effort to go through it point by point as Neil finally did.

--Brant

[Barbara Branden]

Robert,

It saddens me to say this, but what we are witnessing (in addition to all the other schism crap) is one of the reasons I would never want a dyed-in-the-wool ortho-Objectivist in political power. Give me a good old-fashioned corrupt politician any day of the week.

If one of these dudes ever gets his hands on real power, we can expect the following based on many, many acts by ortho-Objectivists that are on record for any and all to see thanks to the Internet:

1. Constant rewriting of history.

2. Gross manipulation of authority.

3. Outright lying to the public practiced as a moral value.

4. Never answering uncomfortable direct questions with a direct response unless it is smarm, intimidation, cussing or moral outrage.

5. Strong formation of cliques.

6. Scapegoating people or groups to the point of bigotry.

7. Anonymous vandalism attacks on public sources of information, including attempts to skew the results of polls and surveys.

And on and on and on.

Granted that one of the tenets of Objectivism is non-initiation of force. But I have seen too much in life (and even in this small subcommunity these last few years) to believe that this will remain in the souls of people who practice the above. I believe more in Lord Acton's observation: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Incidentally, on the Wikipedia entry of Lord Acton, there is a very interesting part of the paragraph where this quote comes from (Essays on Freedom and Power, p. 364): "There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

In my judgment, a dyed-in-the-wool ortho-Objectivist in political power would sell out the basic tenets of Objectivism the moment he or she feels sanctified (Objectivism-wise) by office. I believe such a person would become a very, very dangerous person.

Michael

Michael, there is no question in my mind that you are correct and that you are naming something important. For the Objectivist fundamentalists, many of whom are consumed with hatred and rage, their "enemies" are scum, morally worthless, deserving to be with the doomed and evil passengers on the last run of the Comet in Atlas Shrugged. No moral blame could attach to whomever saw to it that they received justice.

You say such people would sell out the tenets of Objectivism once they were in power. It's true -- but they would do something still worse; they would convince themselves they were remaining true to their Objectivist beliefs.

Barbara

[Neil Parille]

Looks like Peikoff's letter to Jimmy Wales is no longer on his site.

-Neil

[merjet]

Looks like Peikoff's letter to Jimmy Wales is no longer on his site.

It's not there as current content, but it remains in the cache.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Merlin,

The cache will disappear after a while. So I took a screen-shot and am putting it here to keep it on file.

I looked at the code and it appears that the new podcasts are being inserted into an html table. This means by hand, not by some automatic program set up for RSS purposes. And that means that the text was deleted by hand.

I speculate, but I believe the ostensive reason is that the text is time-sensitive and connected with the June 8 podcast, so there is no reason to keep it up for June 15, and the hidden reason is that this is a damn embarrassing episode that the misbehavior of James and Holly Valliant have brought to Peikoff's door. Someone of his stature should not be involved in defending something so easily proven to be intentional misbehavior.

btw - I listened to the most recent podcast. After all the malicious irrationality in dealing with SLOP, it was like a breath of fresh air. (Seriously.) He claimed that there is no Objectivist psychology nor any Objectivist science. There is only Objectivist philosophy. It's good to hear him say that.

But there were still some weird moments. For instance, his idea that Shakespeare was not a good story-teller is pretty half-baked.

And Kant got a promotion. Before Kant was just the most evil man who had ever lived. And Peikoff had an earlier opinion that it was impossible for an evil person to be a genius. But in this podcast he retracted himself and has granted Kant the title of being the only evil genius he knows of in all of humanity.

Dayaamm!

And if I think at this moment that some weird pronouncement like that is a breath of fresh air, imagine how stagnant and repulsive I have felt the anti-Branden-Objectivist world is from commenting on SLOP crap...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I was just over on the SLOP thread where this thing is still playing out.

It's funny, but the fire in me is dying out on the Wikipedia issue. Let's look at what has happened out in the real world.

1. Valliant's participation at Wikipedia, along with that of his wife, has been exposed as the non-objective agenda-driven self-promoting fraud that it is.

2. The Valliants have been thoroughly discredited, with both eternal topic ban (Rand and Branden related articles) and 6 month total ban on them making edits on Wikipedia.

3. References to PARC have been deleted from Rand and Branden related articles.

4. Peikoff has removed that embarrassing email from his site where he essentially told Mr. Wales how to run Wikipedia according to his Branden-hating authority and called on people to disrespect Wikipedia's TOS in the name of Branden-hating.

5. Peikoff's Branden-hating call to action to his listeners/readers utterly flopped, giving a concrete example just how little power he actually wields.

The spread of irrational malice and spite has been neutralized. The teeth were pulled.

So I got bored reading the SLOP thread.

Bored.

Who cares about people blustering petty hatred on their own site to a tiny audience of their own insiders?

They lost this round and prance about pretending to themselves that they didn't.

(yawn...)

Toothless junkyard dogs barking in the junkyard. They can't even bite anymore. So let them bark their impotence to each other.

Time to think about the next round and another issue...

Michael