Thomas Umstattd Jr.

Christ Follower, in love with @MargUmstattd, Father of 4, Host of Novel Marketing and the Christian Publishing Show, CEO of @AuthorMedia.

[Thomas Umstattd Jr. @ThomasUmstattd]

@LondonTommy66 @Channel4News From your emojis I assume you think it is ok for Ukraine to kill to defend their land. If this is true, then why do oppose the crusades? The House of Islam invaded Christian lands and the crusades killed to defend and reclaim their lands.

[Dr Jordan B Peterson @jordanbpeterson]

To the Americans:

I've travelled all over the world. I've familiarized myself with many places, and met many people. And I'm a Canadian, although I’m privileged to reside once again in the States.

And here's something I've noticed, and it’s a key element of America's continuing greatness:

You bloody Americans value success, and you believe in its existence.

This is something that doesn't really happen anywhere else in the world. Even in other free democracies—the United Kingdom; Finland, Sweden, and Norway; Australia, New Zealand and Canada; Germany, France, and the Netherlands (great countries all)—a counterproductive cynicism too often reigns.

Success is equated with exploitation.
Ambition is looked upon with contempt.

This happens sometimes in the United States too—particularly among the miserable progressives, who confuse their resentment, ingratitude and unearned skepticism with wisdom.

But in your great country, by and large, striving is admired and success celebrated.

This means that more people strive and succeed in the US than anywhere else. And it's increasingly obvious. You remain stunningly more innovative and productive than any people anywhere else on the planet.

And so I say, as all should who are fortunate enough to live in the western world, let alone America:

Thank God for the United States.

Thank God for the wisdom of its founders.
Thank God for its faith in the free market and in the natural rights of man.
Happy birthday, you damn Yankees and Southerners.

Long may your admirable country dominate the world.

Long may your freedom and hope provide an example to those suffering everywhere at the hands of their malevolent states.

May your two and a half centuries of unparallelled success be just the beginning.

Your country is the light of the world, and the city on the hill.

Thank God for the USA.

Happy 250th.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

[alexlindsay @alexlindsay]

If you want to understand American optimism…

We celebrate the date that we declared independence, not the date that we achieved it.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

The communist doesn’t think to increase the quality of the grid. The communist demands that you decrease the quality of your life.

They make you ration the things that every other American gets to enjoy. Every single time.

[Thomas Umstattd Jr. @ThomasUmstattd]

@XFreeze Will it follow instructions? I really need it to follow project instructions.

[Pete Hegseth @PeteHegseth]

250. America. @USMC

[Thomas Umstattd Jr. @ThomasUmstattd]

Why is Grok 4.3 so bad at instruction following. It's like the project instructions are not even there. Such a step down from 4.2 and 4.1.

[Thomas Umstattd Jr. @ThomasUmstattd]

@RepPettersen

[Paul Anleitner @PaulAnleitner]

Maybe it’s just better to see yourself living inside a great myth as part of an enchanted world.

[Thomas Umstattd Jr. @ThomasUmstattd]

As an advertising platform that sells people to advertisers, Meta is using those tokens well. The ai tokens make the humans more valuable to the advertisers who want to buy them.

Is Meta good for the humans on the platform? No. But most instagram zombies are happy with slop reels and advertisers are happy to buy those zombies.

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

“Don’t feed the poor yourselves. Get the Roman government or Herod to do it for you by raising taxes.”

- Things Jesus Never Said

[Alex Feinberg @Alexfeinberg]

Birthright citizenship means A LOT of people are living abroad, as US citizens, and almost certainly not filing their legally required tax returns with the IRS

If we can’t stop birthright citizenship, we can make sure they’re getting harassed by the IRS like real Americans

[Thomas Umstattd Jr. @ThomasUmstattd]

@BRiley13380305 Exactly. We needed time to digest the massive influx between 1880 and 1920.

[Thomas Umstattd Jr. @ThomasUmstattd]

We should consider a 100% end to all immigration. Legal and illegal. No visas for anyone for any reason. Hermit Kingdom for one generation. Families can reunite where they came from.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

Dear Jess-not-Jesse:

I usually try not to criticize other professional authors too loudly, unless they are successful enough that my disapprobation is unlikely to hurt their careers.

But, Jess-not-Jessie, you don't have an authorial career. There are no books penned by you for sale on the internet that either Grok or I can find.

Your self-description as a "writer of tough girls + magical boys in liminal spaces" appears to be aspirational or stylistic rather than reflective of published output.

What you are is a freelance editor, gone solo after a layoff from a brief career at Folio, a literary agency. All of the projects listed on your website are those you worked on as part of a team at Folio, rather than as an individual.

None have over 500 Amazon ratings. The exact counts are, at this moment: 455, 153, 90, 69, 36, and 12.

I am unable to find any projects you worked on a freelancer, but I can only observe that whatever those projects are, you did not choose to highlight them in your sales pitch.

My conclusion is that, while you certainly do have an insider's perspective on tradpub as an industry, you are in no position to pontificate on who is and is not "good at writing", since there is zero evidence that you are "good at writing", and zero evidence that that you have helped anyone else become "good at writing".

I would therefore recommend that you avoid using the phrase "unearned sense of superiority".

Myself, I do not pretend to be on the experience level of @Jringo1508 or a @monsterhunter45, but I do know how to sell a book or two, so I can comment from what I have personally witnessed.

Yes, the tradpub industry, as a whole and in general, is heavily biased against White authors, male authors, and especially White male authors.

Publishers generally do not perform racial and sexual discrimination openly and directly. Instead, they outsource this discrimination to literary agents, who are extremely blatant about it. It is not only occasional, but typical, to see submission guidelines with sentences such as "only accepting manuscripts from Queer or BIPOC authors at this time".

Just to be crystal clear, "Queer" means "anything but heterosexual" and "BIPOC" means "anything but White".

This is not a secret conspiracy... it's a public conspiracy, being conducted openly in the noonday sun.

But, like many of the best narratives, this story has a twist, and it goes like this (spoiler warning):

Tradpub is absolutely biased against White male authors. But that bias is effectively HELPING White male authors, not hurting us.

Why?

Because to any new genre fiction author in 2026, tradpub is a liability, not an asset.

As a whole and in general, the traditional publishing industry has been triply hollowed out — first by spreadsheet management who do not understand the industry they are in, then by Amazon eating their breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and finally by leftist ideology that not only doesn't understand the free market, but actively hates it.

This is why the only books they know how to sell are ghost-written celebrity projects, and endless volumes of monster rape porn for fat sexually frustrated feminists.

When communist trustafarians who inhabit modern tradpub use the phrase "good writing", the word "good" means something different to them than it does to anyone without an MFA and/or daddy issues.

When we say "good", we mean enjoyable by a relatively audience of people willing to pay for books.

When they say "good", they mean written from a brown or gay perspective that they think is socially and politically important.

To be crystal clear, they not only have no idea what will sell, they actually don't care.

Each rejection from this bear trap protects White male authors from having our careers handled by incompetents who take most of our earnings in exchange for nothing in particular, and pushes us closer to that shining glorious moment where we realize we do not need them.

That our destiny belongs to us, and we can keep our earnings, keep our IP, and keep our dignity, all for the price of a little extra work, most of which we were going to have to do anyway.

So, dear Jess-not-Jesse, while you are in fact a liar, a midwit, a complete mediocrity, and probably some variety of communist, none of this upsets me in the least. I would like you, and the entire industry you were made redundant from, to keep doing and saying exactly what you are currently doing and saying.

And I will keep telling, and showing, new and aspiring authors how they can succeed without you.

[Thomas Umstattd Jr. @ThomasUmstattd]

@mhdksafa Correct. Stealing money from Sally to give it to John is not Christianity. It’s socialism. Sally choosing to give money to John is Christianity.