The N Commandments
An academic from the University of East Anglia argues that animals have privacy rights. “What does it say about our assumptions about animals” when people film them he asked. In Britain a Muslim who spray painted a war memorial with a slogan calling for Islamic world domination, the assassination of Gordon Brown and the exaltation of Osama bin Laden is not prosecuted, after authorities concluded that his graffiti was “not racially motivated”. A teacher is acquitted for beating a student with a 7 pound dumb bell after he snaps from repeated taunting.
Each incident exemplifies in its bizarre way the new morality. Things are now ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’ for reasons which only 20 years ago would have been regarded as completely crazy. Take Peter Harvey, the teacher at a school in Britain. He knew the rules, the only problem was, he couldn’t take them any more.
Hounded for months by a group of students who decided to see what it would take to make him snap; tripped up, shoved him into hedges and followed home threateningly, Harvey went on a 5 month leave of absence because he feared he would lose his mind. Punishing the gang leaders was out of the question. Traditional classroom disciplinary measures were no longer available to him. No more harsh words, no more corporal punishment, however slight. Teachers had been sentenced to jail for striking students in a country where the police were called into classrooms 40 times a day because the schools had lost control. Upon his return from leave the same group decided to secretly record him going over the edge and arranged to goad him after which they planned to distribute the video to complete his humiliation. They didn’t reckon on the 7 pound dumb bell. The result was a 14 year old with a skull fracture and a man accused of murder.
In a way Peter Harvey was a failure. He couldn’t meet the enlightened standard. Political correctness is a tough game; it demands a relentless reinforcement of small problems until things fall apart. Double down until your broke. Poor, weak Mr Harvey wasn’t made of stern enough stuff. He might never have snapped if some classroom disciplinary measure between taking it and going postal existed. But in the face of the relentless need to “be a caring school” no matter the hooliganism, and probably because he had to care for a chronically sick wife and child Harvey committed the cardinal error of forgetting “that it’s for the children”, even if it really isn’t. The instant realization of his utter worthlessness sank in the moment he realized what he had done.
He was led away making a guttural howling noise, and was later seen headbutting a wall at the police station because he wanted to “destroy horrible me”.
It was the reaction of a man brought to the level of an animal. Doubtless the politically correct brigade will complete the task, though they should be reminded that we ought not film animals in the wild, even when they are teachers being humiliated in the classroom. Underlying the new morality is not some notion of good or bad, but the preservation of privileges in an unstated but obvious hierarchy. Things are now ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’ in the old courtly sense. Did you forget yourself? Rise above your station? The idea that animals should not be filmed in their burrows is founded on the idea that their relative ranking in the PC universe should be revised. “What does it say about our assumptions about animals?” That we think we’re better, hence we’re bigots. QED. Animals up, humans down. But not all humans. Some humans are better than others and we all know who they are. Not inquiring into animal behavior is of a piece with not asking people who show up in our living rooms what they are doing carting away the TV set or asking why they’re climbing over a border fence. It has to do with who’s doing the carting or who’s the climbing. Everything, guilt or innocence, morality or immorality is judged not by what is done, but by who did it. Alternet has an article by a rape victim who thinks her Haitian attacker was justified because she was white and deserved to be punished. Others are above it all. If Roman Polanski does rape, is it really rape?
The need to judge every act within the new hierarchy means only one real crime is left in the world: not knowing your place. Hence when a Muslim spray painted a British war memorial calling for Islamic world domination, the murder of the Prime Minister and the praising Osama Bin Laden the only accusation that could politically stick was the allegation of racial crime. It was madness to consider treason, incitement to murder or aiding and abetting terrorism. Those are judgmental things. Even terrorism is now referred to as human-caused disaster; so that’s out. And certainly nothing so quaint as charging him with defiling the memory of those who died for their country could even be considered. That’s so yesterday. Since no racial epithets or religious insults were spray painted, what crime could there be? And so he walks.
Political correctness is gradually replacing common sense and natural law with an unstated but controlling code of manners. Certain things cannot be said; certain illegal things are legal and vice versa; things though evident may not exist. Go to the eye doctor. Nothing to see here, just move along. Doubts are driven underground; dissent is expressed in secret. It’s a cave of whispers, the new Sound of Silence. In brief the politically correct world is becoming very much like Mr. Peter Harvey’s classroom: a “caring place” seething with hatred; a place of forced gaiety, of smiles as mirthful as the Joker’s, a place you want to take five month’s vacation from knowing nothing will have changed when you get back.
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after authorities concluded that his graffiti was “not racially motivated”.
it was some kind of “islamist humor”, isn’t it such a pity that we can’t admit that there isn’t such an unviversal sense of humor that can be understood by every plebeian (snark on]
So, the moral of the story is Harvey did the right thing, and he should have done it a lot sooner, and perhaps with an automatic weapon.
People forget the purpose of the law is to make acts like his unnecessary, and to make the state the locus of all justice, rather than a matter between individuals.
At least he was acquitted. I would have voted to acquit even if he’d killed the worthless little punk.
“In Britain a Muslim who spray painted a war memorial with a slogan calling for Islamic world domination, the assassination of Gordon Brown and the exaltation of Osama bin Laden is not prosecuted,”
Proving even the worst people have some good ideas; give him credit for 1 out of 3 there.
(oh come on do I have to say thass a joke? besides I didn’t say which one, you are just assuming you know which one in your own nasty little minds. But I didn’t say.)
The logical result of our betters, in their Orwellian way, decreeing “people are naturally good”. Right. Apparently they were never parents of toddlers.
Apropos of that ethically sensitive prof at the U. of East Anglia (must be something in the drinking water there; lest we forget, the place is home to the CRU of global warming fame)– “[Mills] says it might be acceptable to film ‘public events’ such as animals hunting – but questions more intrusive recording.”
How about those “intrusive” cat owners who post videos of their toilet-trained cats successfully using the human fecal receptacle over at Kitty Goes Potty (website subtitled “Watch These Cats Poop,” for all you voyeurs out there)? Clawsuit coming in 5…4…3…
http://www.kittygoespotty.com/index.php
As Wretchard says, “Animals up, humans down.” Although I’ll take a feline overlord over a human bureaucrat any day.
Here’s where political correctness is taking us:
http://nickelkid.net/docs/greats/its_a_good_life.html
or if you prefer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfGWvexg90w
Rule by the childish.
Of course, that’s assuming Obama’s foreign policy doesn’t take us here, instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_and_His_Dog
Someone on the innertubes the other day labeled Britain “a formerly western nation.” I think that pretty much fits. Admiral Nelson and the Duke of Wellington would fire at will on their own country if they could see it now.
I agree that Peter is a failure, the feral little shits are still alive. None of them are going to turn 18 and suddenly become productive members of society. They can still serve a function however, break them at the wheel as a warning to others.
In Britain a Muslim who spray painted a war memorial with a slogan calling for Islamic world domination, the assassination of Gordon Brown and the exaltation of Osama bin Laden is not prosecuted, after authorities concluded that his graffiti was “not racially motivated”.
But what if it was? Why can’t Arab racism be considered to be a form of racism?
What is a race? Is Islam a race? If Muslims systematically discriminate for other Muslims and against non-Muslims, why shouldn’t this be considered to be a form of racial discrimination? Especially when it is?
We may call this “political correctness”, but it is really a form of racism. And one of the most pernicious forms of racism in modern times is “white anti-white racism” – the hypocritical and shallow racism of people who think there is something inherently wrong with being descended from Europeans.
One of the great legacies of the West is fair-mindedness, the idea that race should not matter in making decisions. We need to keep this legacy. To keep this legacy, we need to fight those who twist words into their opposites.
The word “racism” is often twisted into meaning the opposite of what it has historically meant. Some people define “racism” to mean that certain groups can’t be racist while other groups cannot avoid being racist. This definition is, of course, ridiculous – and racist. Interahamwe is as racist as they come, never mind how the racism of “political correctness” that would deny that Hutus massacring Tutsis en masse could ever be racist because Hutus are black.
What did other teachers have to say about this? Did they attempt to back him up at all or just all thank God it was not happening to them? They should have demanded discipline by the administration or walked out. I think it is true, you teach people how to treat you.
I think this may be Wretchard’s most terrifying post ever.
I can handle discussions about global jihad and nuclear terrorism, but there is something uniquely awful about turning rational human beings into unreasonable animals.
Situational Ethics begats Situational Punishment. There is an internal logic here. The idea of Sharia Law applying in certain circumstances is simply recognition of the fact We are already have many versions of “Sharia Law” applying to different circumstances.
About 15 years ago a friend of mine paid a lady so he could live in an unused house she owned. The lady’s no-good son was living there and she wanted him out of the place. But the son was feuding with a former friend over a girl and “someone” threw a jug of gasoline in the back door and the place burnt down. But when called the Sheriff Deputies spread their hands and said “Yeah, we know who must have done it. But what good would it do to arrest that kid? He’s worthless. He’d never learn anything from it or change his ways.” Kids of that kind represent a different set of laws. If, say, the guy who manages the local Wal Mart committed the same act, he would have been in jail for years and lost any chance of attaining a similar position again.
#8 pendejo grande: Mark Steyn also got it right when he called England “Somalia with chip shops.”
A most excellent post Wretchard, disturbing but excellent. You often allude to George Orwell’s 1984 but lately I’ve begun to wonder if the creeping dystopia of our times is more like Huxley’s Brave New World.
In the novel you were born into your place, sort of like the now cherished identity groups that the PC crowd deems to be so important, and all was magic and light. And anyone who didn’t quite fit in was viewed as someone who just needed the right treatment or therapy.
Does it sound familiar?
I see a clockwork orange. Britain seems almost ripe to be the playground for Alex.
Alternet has an article by a rape victim who thinks her Haitian attacker was justified because she was white and deserved to be punished.
Seems like the author of that alternet article has a history of being raped.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/301057.php
I’ve mentioned before that the champions of this new morality are the same sort who are against capital punishment. They don’t mind killing the innocent — and I’m not even talking about abortion here, but euthanizing the old or those (including young children) with the misfortune to be severely ill. As a matter of fact, these depraved tools will even celebrate murderers if the victims happened to be cops.
Prof. Peter Singer, the “bioethicist” who believes in killing the crippled innocent, also kick-started the animal rights movement with the book Animal Liberation. It is inherently logical that animal activists and euthanizers can be the same people: what so many compasionate dupes who are into “animal rights” fail to understand is that the hardcore animal rights activists don’t want to raise other animals to the level of humans, but want to lower the status of humans to that of being just another animal. If animals kill their young or their old when nature necessitates it, why shouldn’t we humans, especially in the brave new world of artificial scarcity that leads to rationing?
Wretchard writes: “He might never have snapped if some classroom disciplinary measure between taking it and going postal existed.”
Similarly, we let petty criminality in certain neighborhoods slide into lawlessness, until an armored battering ram is required to enter the fortified crack house.
Wretchard writes: “Everything, guilt or innocence, morality or immorality is judged not by what is done, but by who did it.”
Nail on the head. This is why violence or incitement committed by politically-fashionable groups is always excused, rationalized or ‘contextualized’. Or why Tea Party critics don’t need actual examples of violence in order to brand the movement dangerous.
Wretchard writes: “Since no racial epithets or religious insults were spray painted, what crime could there be?”
Vandalism? Destruction of public property?
“He might never have snapped if some classroom disciplinary measure between taking it and going postal existed.”
The analogy in international relations is that there is nothing between the equivalent of sending a note to the assistant principal of student relations (a UN resolution) and whacking a scumbag with a dumbell (turning Iran into glass).
Which is why there is at least a 30% chance that a vain weak individual like Obama will be remembered in history as the US President who pushed the big red button.
Kinuachdrach @ 20
Exactly so. Tell a liberal that SAC’s motto was “Peace is Our Profession” and they look at you like you’ve sprouted a second nose, and even after you explain it they just can’t wrap their heads around the idea of being strong enough that no one challenges you and you don’t have to fight.
Children. Think of them as very smart middle-schoolers in terms of emotional development, wisdom, understanding of life’s limits, tragedies and history. Smart, sheltered 11-year olds.
Wretchard: “a “caring place” seething with hatred; a place of forced gaiety, of smiles as mirthful as the Joker’s, a place you want to take five month’s vacation from knowing nothing will have changed when you get back.”
We already have a concise term for places like what Wretchard describes: lunatic asylum
I don’t think anyone’s pointed out the real danger of this slide in standards. One of the primary reasons that laws must be enforced and standards of behavior upheld by authority is that when they are not, people in general lose their respect and support for that authority, which means they will lose their previous inhibitions about living up to the old agreements.
If laws are not enforced publicly, then they will be enforced privately. And not directly, the free market has a time honored solution to that. You know a guy who knows a guy who for a couple hundred dollars, or whatever, can make your problem go away. And maybe in a street brawl somebody gets both their kneecaps broken with a baseball bat, and no one knows who did it. Or for a few dollars more a body gets found on the outskirts of town with no clues. These “somebodies” will have ties to the local police, who of course will also be disgusted with the lack of control and who will probably be taking a cut of the action. And who in society would oppose at this point, except a few misguided idealists? The old systems will have failed, the law will have been shown to be worthless, and private “justice” will have turned into the only justice available to anyone.
And pretty quickly the people who are *really* running things are simply those who are the most willing to kill on the spot for purely mercenary reasons, and once they end up in charge of the local police it’s game over.
That’s the state northern Mexico is in right now, and that’s the state of much of the 3rd world. That’s where we’re headed if this trend isn’t stamped out quickly and harshly.
wws @23
Sounds like my home town…
“I know dis guy, y’see, and he got a coupla guys can fix dat fer ya and nobody knows nuttin’, see whut I mean?”
When days are old, the knights not bold
But manners are quite particular
We dare not shout, or e’en speak out
Lest we be perpendicular
Against a wall, a waiting pall
For daring to express a view
That some might see as blasphemy
And brand us as a parvenu
Ill bred, a boor, and what is more
Ill mannered, a vulgarian
For daring to vile words to spew
Like some grotesque Bulgarian
How could it be my fair country
Is peopled now by madder men
Where knights once bold are now just old
And wise too late but sadder men
Good, but you’re not going all the way Wretchard.
WHO created PC, controls it, nurtures it, protects it from every attack, extends it at every opportunity, and uses it as a weapon. Who in fact uses PC as a weapon, and whom is PC aimed at?
That answer is quite simple.
White, upper and middle class women largely created PC, certainly protect it and extend it, and use it as a weapon against those they hate most: Beta Men, almost all of whom are White.
Roman Polanski is not guilty of “rape-rape” to quote Whoopi Goldberg, because he is NOT a beta male. For the same reason Charlie Sheen, accused of holding a knife to his wife’s throat on Christmas Day, is beloved by White women and a sex symbol still.
Women forgive ANYTHING BUT BETA. ANYTHING.
Why does that White woman blame White men for her rape? Because WHite men are beta. They disgust her more than her rapist.
The Muslim who defaced the War Memorial is a Muslim. He’s not a beta White guy. Women don’t care if a Muslim defaces a War Memorial, in fact they find it “edgy” because the man is violent and dominant. Something women find sexy, a turn-on. After all, the men who are memorialized were “beta” White guys, something she’d find disgusting.
The students require male discipline, by “beta” type White guys? Oh please, any time you see women running things it is over-run with gays and PC (but I repeat myself). Go watch two reality shows and see the difference:
1. The Dallas Cowboys “Making the Team” reality show about training camp.
2. HGTV’s “Selling New York” about the phony people in high end real estate. [Almost all the buyers and male agents are gay, everyone else is a phony woman.]
There’s plenty of money and stupidity on display among the Cowboys. TO makes an appearance (its several years old but still repeats on NFL Network from time to time). Bringing new heights of idiocy. But for the most part, status and power on the team is based on actual accomplishment, and the team is united in the desire to win. Guys like TO are openly mocked, for a lack of commitment to team and winning.
Meanwhile, money sloshing around in a deeply feminine context in NYC becomes very, very gay and decadent. Phoniness abounds, as does PC and PC celebrity worship, and all the rest. Obama is gushed over like the uber-celebrity people consider him to be. Astonishing amounts of money are made over … frou-frou restaurants and the like. Everything is a tense, unrelaxed PC jungle, much more tense than even the Cowboys lower-level guys sweating over cuts in training camp.
Ordinary White guys are a threat. Threats to power, by women and gays, threats to power by rich connected guys, threats to take power away and use it for their own devices. Not the least of which is profoundly threatening to the desire by women to maximize their access, seuxal and otherwise, to Alpha Males.
Why wasn’t there a measure of classroom discipline? Because it would have put power in the hands of male teachers who can project authority and spank little bastiches. Instead of gay men, or women, weak and ineffectual but “correct” in using social power among themselves.
Even worse, “beta male” White guys could rise above their station and become … semi-Alphas. Which women find horrifying. Nothing makes a woman sicker, more revolted, than the prospect of being fooled that a man she thought was a man along the lines of Charlie Sheen or Roman Polanski was merely a poseur, not the real type of article. Thus PC as one massive “test” to keep Betas in their place.
Yes, I know “not all women are like that.” So what? Most are. Women can and will put down their natural revulsion of beta males to marry and have kids with them if they need to for economic reasons. Freed from want by Western Wealth, women now can structure things their own way.
Hence PC. The Commandment of which is “Don’t be Beta.”
“a rape victim who thinks her Haitian attacker was justified because she was white”
Eldridge Cleaver did write that raping white woman was striking back at the oppressor. I don’t think he had the imagination to realize she’d agree. If only he’d known….
““Most of this was not our fault,” says Frances.”
Genie … Bottle … Mule: Frances’ ‘bible’: “a book that unintentionally contributed to vast and sudden increases in the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder (manic depression), after it made changes in those definitions.”
…-
“Psychiatry’s `bible’ could roll out a whole new list of disorders – and more prescriptions for psychoactive drugs
As Dr. Allen Frances read through the list of proposed changes to psychiatry’s bible of mental sickness, alarms started ringing in his own mind.
“I was surprised,” the renowned U.S. psychiatrist says, “that the proposals managed to be much worse than my most pessimistic expectations.”
By the time he was finished reading, Frances had calculated that the recommendations contained within the first draft for the fifth and latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – a hugely influential book used daily by doctors worldwide, psychiatry’s official classification of all the ways humanity can go “mad” – could unnecessarily trigger wholesale “epidemics” of mental illness and expose millions more adults and children to potentially harmful psychiatric drugs.
Frances, more than most, knows the kind of surprises that may be lurking.
He chaired the task force that wrote the current edition of the manual – referred to as DSM-IV – which Frances says is a book that unintentionally contributed to vast and sudden increases in the diagnosis of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder (manic depression), after it made changes in those definitions.”
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/canada/Psychiatry+bible+could+roll+whole+list+disorders/2951855/story.html
Mencius Moldbug has a post on how black people in the US are functionally a noble or aristocratic class.
This is just how pacifism works. The response to aggression is submission. The response to more aggression is more submission. Since for people inclined to engage in aggression the response to submission is more aggression, the process quickly spins wildly out of control.
Despite all the rules I assume most teachers have some ability for interpersonal dominance. They have some way of deterring aggressive behavior to avoid completely losing control. This teacher apparently didn’t. So paradoxically the only people who can function in the PC environment are somewhat rough.
psychiatry’s official classification of all the ways humanity can go “mad”
I’d have no problem with DSM-V if it classifies PC as a form of delusional disorder or substance abuse disorder (caused by addiction to kool-aid).
Paging Dr. Irons . . .
PA Cat, PC is a tool (just like newspeak). It was invented as a part of Активные мероприятия (Active Measures or IOW, ideological subversion).
The goal was to turn the brain of a subject (or a whole bunch of them) into a mush by forcing the subject to accept contradictory concepts as equally valid and then creating pseudo-logical constructs based on the contradictions (you can “prove” any damn thing if you remove any relevant context and substitute your own as long as the straw men are well hidden) — and thus programming the subject with responses that diverge from a normal, sane behavior.
This is not unlike a cult programming, just more subtle and because the origin of the programming is obscured, abstract and impersonal, more potent in long term prospects, when several generations are involved.
So, you can probably call it a programmed mental disorder.
Antidote? Probably none, the mind is so on an entirely different track that even a strong dose of reality may be of no use.
I can only think of a prevention — teaching not to accept any facts at a face value, let alone something based on a deferral to authority.
Long before PC, J Edgar Hoover wrote or had ghost-written a book called “Masters of Deceit” in which he noted quite accurately because the observation wasn’t original, that everything the Left said was the reverse of what it meant. “Fair Play for Cuba”, Committees for World Peace, International Solidarity, Action Groups to Promote Prosperity, Defend Free Speech — all of these were written in ~P notation.
Before Hoover, Orwell noticed the same thing. And so did Camus: ‘it is innocence not guilt that is called upon to justify itself’. Room 101 was named after a wartime BBC broadcasting booth. So before there were Womyn, there was Gramsci. And before Gramsci there was the eternal grifter. Lenin was nearly right about Communism. It isn’t popular power plus electricity. It’s Stalin plus Madison Avenue.
The other night I was at dinner with a bunch of guys who were lamenting the incessant deconstruction of Australia’s traditions. Now some Left wing historian is coming up with a new book saying that the ANZACs were a myth. Just recently another historian had shown Australia was really a fascist state which should say “sorry” to the world. Of course they are not alone. We all knew, until the underlying research was exposed to be a fraud, that gun ownership was rare in early America. Numerous examples will occur to anyone who thinks on it. Large parts of the intelligensia are devoted to churning out disinformation. They’re like a replicating virus whose job is to poison the memory of the system the better to bring it down. They churn out intellectual Frankensteins on an industrial basis.
What these manufacturies have in common is not Womyn, but the Left. Womyn did not create the Left. The Left created the concept of Womyn. Once they gave it life, it and other similar special interest monstrosities, have lurched about creatively minting their own special brand of insanity. You know what’s so funny about Al Sharpton? He’s not original.
If he were, the Left would be worried. Originality is to them what silver bullets are to werewolves. The most dangerous thing about blaming women for our current cultural problems is that a) we can’t get rid of women; they are half of the human race; b) the distract from the bigger problem: men have left themselves get pansified; not feminized (real femininity is something as unachievable to men as felinity). This BS is only a problem if we take it. To go blame someone else is to play the Left’s game. Reject it. Things start and end right where each of us sit.
Fortunately, we’re not taking it any more, or at least taking it less. Some academics I know have started to go back to the sources and discovered (as one Australian author I know did) that the real truth is the reverse of what the Commie histories state. He was vilified but he resisted and prospered; and the gent is now running an online journal and last I saw was toting a Blackberry.
The real challenge the Tea Parties represent is that for the first time, people are talking back in large numbers. The spell is breaking. The sneer has less and less force. Why, even minorities are demanding to be addressed by their real names. And this is good, because while we can’t get rid of women, society can get rid of the Left, or at least put them in the museum of historical curios, aka the ‘dustbin of history’.
The tower of lies will crash, and soon. The lack of money will throttle it. At the end of it, we’ll still be people: men and women, but the Left will take a body blow.
Saw an ad on TV for some sort of sneaker. It claimed that wearing their sneaker gave you the perfect ass. That was the expression used as the TV showed a young lady with a world class turd cutter strutting down the street. Then they go on to improving the legs and show some finnnnnnnne babe in daisy dukes with legs that went up to there and a butt that would bring tears to a donkey’s eyes.
I’m think 30 years ago, that Ad would have resulted in fines, jail time and maybe a lynching. Now it won’t even sell sneakers. Except in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Won’t show the ad there. The Muttawas would burn down the TV station and behead every inside. Then stop on the way home and pick up a pair of those sneakers for the little wifey.
Humans are strange.
I’m waiting for CNN to go topless. Not that there is anything worth seeing on CNN, but FOX would have to follow to stay ahead in the ratings. Now I’m watching. Julie Huddy has to have the finest rack in New York. It’s Hallie Berry grade.
For example of programming, here is an innocent sample what you can achieve within a span of several hours. Now imagine if the programming lasts for the duration of schooling of the young, impressionable minds, moreso that the topic of the programming is an abstract concept that can’t be falsified by a comparison with reality (contrast with communist countries in Central Europe, the discrepancies were glaring, thus there were not that many snake oil buyers).
Now some Left wing historian is coming up with a new book saying that the ANZACs were a myth.
He thinks Gallipoli was just a stage set (like the conspiracy theory about the moon walk)?
Womyn did not create the Left. The Left created the concept of Womyn.
According to the WaPo, there is a bumper crop of women seeking House seats as Republicans: “‘I think there could be some surprises this year,’ said McMorris Rodgers. Republican National Committee Co-Chairman Jan Larimer, who also heads its women’s program, attributed the increase to anger over Democratic domestic policy priorities: ‘The policies of the Obama administration and a Congress led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have energized women to fight back. First, they were afraid and now they are angry about health care, their jobs, how to pay for their children’s education.’
And the example of Palin certainly didn’t hurt. Women ‘are giving the GOP a second look and realizing that our policies, principles and vision make sense and work for their families,’ she said.”
(H/T to Jennifer Rubin at Commentary for the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/29/AR2010042903222_pf.html)
At the end of it, we’ll still be people: men and women, but the Left will take a body blow. From Wretchard’s keyboard to God’s eyes, as they say.
Wretchard: This BS is only a problem if we take it. To go blame someone else is to play the Left’s game. Reject it. Things start and end right where each of us sit.
I am repeating the same at every opportunity. The group identity (tribal) politics is a lame game and only helps the Left. It’s a blind alley. A trap.
Teacher assualting a student with a clenched dubmbell is so out of whack.
A man brought to the level of an animal by PC? To attack a child, however he/she may be horrible, and there are lots of bad kids, with a lethal weapon, when there was no threat to immidiate life?
The guild, the professonal ethic which is supposed to supercede religion, ethnicity, politics and certainly the news of the day, ought to still exist
I am Medical. My wife is a Teacher, my daughter is a Veterinary surgical expert. We all work and we can each understand that although there are differences, we have a shared faith in something moral and damn the political economic or whatever is happening today.
Everyone wants this from us. The doctor teacher, attorney… someone out there when I need what they do, does this in a way that puts my individual interest above the junk that happens on Google News.
So yesterday one of my patients could not cooperate when the time came to sink the needle into her spinal canal. No fault of her, bigger fault for me is understanding where we failed. Yet I did not smash her into complience with a claw hammer. I want to understand where we could have done better.
Screw PC. If you are a teacher you should know better. You hold to a higher standard. This man seems so deranged that the greatest crime is keeping him in a job he could not handle. If you cannot hold your ethic over the pressures that exist – get out of the kitchen. We have work to do.
Yep Wretchard. Know your place. Five or more months is not going to change that. We all should have known that Goldman-Sacks was not the Sisters of Charity.
Spindok
#32 Wretchard
What you describe is much like what happened during the Reformation. The monopoly that the Church held on reading the bible was broken. It was translated into native languages so that any literate person could read it. And once they could read it for themselves, they could interpret it for themselves, and their interpretations often conflicted with the official line.
In the context of current Western political thought, the idea was that a statist socialist state was inevitable. The main disconnect in America was as to the speed we should take to get there.
What is arising now, and not from the political class, is the notion that we need not go there at all, and that for the common people it is a most undesirable destination.
There is no one Martin Luther in the movement. They are everywhere. Whether the movement dies or goes on to inflame the world remains to be seen, but in any case it is interesting. The very legitimacy of the Left may be tottering on the edge of the abyss.
Vinny hit on part of the problem we now have. The memorial defacer was guilty of vandalism, period. Why do we elevate his actions to the level of political or religious discourse. I think he should have been made to scrub the sidewalks of Trafalgar Square with a toothbrush. We constantly allow our laws, customs, and standards of behaviour to be eroded. If we don’t respect our own culture, how can we expect idiot thugs to do so.
Spindok, it happened in UK. It is insane there. I think you have no idea how insane, so you are missing a part of the context. Yes, the teacher was apparently not up to job. But every single tool that he may have used to get things into a manageable situation has been removed from his arsenal. It is wonder that there is not more teachers snapping into a rage bundle.
For instance, in UK, you have no right to defend yourself from a criminal. If you do, you may end up in prison, while the criminal may sue you for any physical harm and mental anguish, beside being free to mug someone else. So, not only you find yourself in prison, you end up financially supporting the bastard.
That insane.
Tcobb: The very legitimacy of the Left may be tottering on the edge of the abyss.
There is long road to go before they would be there, there is a lot of deluded fools out there. A lot. It would be a mistake to underestimate them.
Wretchard — You can’t cheat an honest man. There’s always been hacks and charlatans. No magic powers, no Svengali mesmerism, is at work here. Who thinks Bill Ayers or Lenin or Gramsci or any of those guys is an inspiration? Come on! These guys would not last five minutes within an all male context.
Believe me, if women hated PC, it would be gone. Because women form the biggest voting bloc, being more numerous, by living longer, and bloc voting.
The interest of women in eliminating beta White guys and pursuing dominant Alphas is what gives the Left power. Its what makes an otherwise idiotic con man obvious to all, a powerful force unstoppable. A man suggesting to other men that their fathers and grandfathers were odious near-Nazis would get his ass well and truly kicked, in one form or another. Suggest it to women, slaves to pursuit of Alphas and status, and they’ll be after it the way they are.
Of course we cannot get rid of women. We can however reduce their voting and cultural power by pushing them out of the cultural and political sphere through open ridicule. By pointing out the obvious: 90% of what women do is run after Alphas. Ridicule and mock women’s slavery to their own sexual impulses wrapped up in ideology. The proper response to a woman’s lecture on PC is to laugh in her face and call her on her desire to have sex with a dominant a-hole, and her disgust at beta males.
Need I remind anyone of the demographics of the Tea Parties? Mostly post-menopausal women no longer slaves to their desires, and able to look to economic versus sexual interests? You see a LOT of women at the Tea Parties. Almost none of them, however, are pre-menopausal.
[Even Republican women hate Palin, while men like her, by a difference of about 11 points. ]
Between myself and Wretchard’s theories, I propose the test of empiricism. If I AM RIGHT (of course I am, I’m me!) then my theory (Leftism is driven by women’s desire to screw Alphas and exile beta males) should predict pretty much everything about the Left and non-Left. If Wretchard is right, then his theory of Svengali mesmerizing people against their own interests should prove correct and we should find a conspiratorial figure under every bed.
Tribal politics are the most powerful. They ALWAYS work. Why? Because you can trust your tribe. The reason America was willingly changed from an 80% White (and mostly working-middle class) nation to one barely 66%, where to “buy” decent housing, neighbors, safety, requires an upper middle class lifestyle for the most part, is the dissolution of the White Middle/Working Class TRIBE by women free to pursue Alphas.
There was a comment on Roissy’s blog a while back. It bears summarizing. That basically, while an upper middle class, professionally educated White guy may not have much in common intellectually with a working class White guy, they have the same basic interests in making social safety and low crime areas common and cheap (by limiting the numbers and social powers of non-Whites). The same basic interest in limiting anti-White male policies and outcomes. That they don’t have to hang out together because that’s how tribe works. Your cousins are for you, against outsiders.
Upper Class Black Harvard Professors like Skip Gates have the same TRIBE and self-interest with say, a street corner drug dealer in Baltimore. Why? Because they have the same enemy (White guys), the same objectives (increase their social and cultural and legal power), the same need for special and better treatment vs. White guys. They don’t hang out, but Gates and the guys from the real-life “Wire” have the same TRIBE.
I don’t see anything wrong with that, that’s hard-wired into human nature via evolution. It would be alien and strange if humans did not behave that way. But you can’t win if you deny human nature.
#42 twobyfour
Perhaps. But on the other hand, social changes sometimes happen by quantum leaps. How many people think there ought to be separate drinking fountains for “whites” and “coloreds?” When did that fall apart, and how long did it take for that notion to be discarded into the dustbin of history?
I’m not saying that it will happen, but the leftist PC world-view could vanish like disco did if the dynamics are right. And for the most part PC is nothing more than a fashion statement for must of the common people who supposedly espouse it. And fashion can change so quickly.
Here’s my own test of empiricism for my theory.
I predict that the May 1 rallies tomorrow will have lots and lots of young people. That the majority of Whites participating in the La Raza Reconquista rallies will be White women. That these women further will be of average but not above average attractiveness. That there will be many signs detracting and decrying White men in general.
I will further predict that the anti-Immigration rallies will be comprised mostly of men and women over 55. That the women in the anti-Immigration rallies will be almost entirely over 55, with the few younger ones daughters or grand-daughters. That the anti-Immigration rallies will be smaller.
I further predict that the La Raza types will throw bottles and other things at the cops, and run riot generally, without the police doing anything. While the anti-Immigration rallies will be beset by both the Cops and the La Raza types, with the young beating the (older, White) anti-Immigration groups.
I further predict that the class of journalists, who resemble the phonies on “Selling New York” (gay, female) will jump up and down in defense of Rosa their illegal alien nanny/maid, and so on. I predict the strongest defenders will be those possessed of a revulsion for beta males (White women journalists and non-White female journalists) and those against the La Raza types will be the Derbyshire, Steyn brigade, guys who just don’t care about pandering to female desires for the “right” opinions.
Let’s see how I do.
whiskey@45:
Could you diagram that?
Getting so complicated I need a visual aid.
Apparently the final setup for Harvey was this: the ringleader proceeded to swordfight at a lab class with meter sticks. They then proceeded to play volleyball in the lab with pieces of paper. The student then swore at Harvey when he tried to pry a bunsen burner stand from his hands. That’s when the teacher snapped. And while that’s not to be condoned, if Harvey did nothing the odds are that he would have been accused of letting the kids endanger themselves.
This is the cry of the modern age: ‘why didn’t you protect me from myself? Why can’t I have everything?’ Fighting terrorists is inhumane. Some lawyers are now planning to sue UAV operators for war crimes; but if you don’t fight them you are responsible for allowing them to kill someone. They want affordable housing with no subprime crisis. Jobs for all and open borders for everyone. They demand no interrogation and perfect intelligence. They want free, quality, healthcare. They want to have their cake and eat it too. A free lunch, and a desert to follow.
And the amazing thing is that politicians are lining up to promise just that. Schools where rules are optional but self-esteem is guaranteed. High graduation rates and no learning. Money for nothing and your chicks for free. And when the Tea Party guys put up their hands and ask, “who’s going to pay for this?” the response is “You racists! What militia do you belong to?” What’s that got to do with anything? And then you stop and start to worry: why are you having this crazy conversation. Who is nuttier? The nut or the guy who takes nuts seriously? But there’s no choice. Politics is the process of engagement, even if that engagement takes place in a funny farm.
So you just suck it up, calmly put away that 7 pound dumbbell and maybe just see a man about a dog.
#45. whiskey
Jesus God–don’t you realize that empiricism itself, as a concept, is a cultural construct of evil western culture? If you accept it as a valid concept that would mean that all of the PC crowd folks are bloody f*cking idiots. And you can’t have that–it would hurt their self esteem–the greatest sin that can ever be committed.
Whiskey’s predictions would be probably close on mark in certain well defined geographic areas. Big blue cities with their fashions.
Not so in small towns in flyover country.
Whiskey, stick to porn and hating women. No wonder you’re single and a total loser and if you’re a pathetic lefty infiltrator trying to make decent conservative white men look bad, you’re just plain EVIL and you and your mentally challenged twin “4merly_a_person” ain’t foolin’ anyone.
Whites are so non-bigoted nowadays they have lost ‘stranger’ sympathy for their own so your premise that ‘whites’ will stick together is null and void:
TRUTH
Time to find a new stratagem and perhaps a realdoll and a lifetime stock of lube.
w@47: So you just suck it up, calmly put away that 7 pound dumbbell and maybe just see a man about a dog.
Snapping takes many forms – loss of faith, loss of joie de vivre, loss of desire and will, loss of hair. The analysis is incomplete without including the psychological component of individuals subject to the situational pressures of PC demands. It’s an issue of possessing the cool courage to stand up and the good judgment to stand down.
Something else to remember is that the stress profile is far from random. Some get more than others, but Christianity tells us never more than we can handle, which I know to be a lie.
Bravo, Wretchard, you strike at the root of the problem. For years, since I woke up following 911, I have said that all the Left’s accusations are a projection of their own soul (such as it is) and their agenda. War is peace, love is hate, control is compassion; seen with the right X-ray glasses the sloganeering is exposed as horror.
I worked as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles for a little over a year and got out. In this particular school district every classroom was a war zone. I have been spat on, physically assaulted, verbally abused and had a desk thrown at me once. I have no gift for controlling large numbers of child hooligans, and I know it, so I quit. The urge to kill I understand.
“Yes, the teacher was apparently not up to job. ”
On the contrary, he was very much up to the job…of teaching. The article states that he was a DEVOTED teacher, with many former students testifying in his favour. What he wasn’t up to was the job of mucking out the cages of smelly wild animals. That wasn’t the job he was hired to do, either, but the management callously added that into his job description over the years. The kids were animals: filthy, stinking animals. And their families were just what I expected to find when I read the story; they “stormed out of the courtroom”, enraged that they didn’t get the payoff they’ve been conditioned to expect from years of successful persecution of their betters.
Yes, Whiskey has that knack for a wide generalization brush. If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.
I think that he had a sort of bad luck, which may have been partially self-inflicted–by looking for the same type of female and always ending with the short end of a stick. Due to his limited horizon, he simply extrapolates, instead of getting out of the shell he is in and getting a negation–it is simpler that way. Don’t want to overanalyze it, but I can imagine where is he coming from. Ditto his views on races. They are related to his immediate environment.
I agree that he may not be particularly endearing with his views.
Also, what Whiskey so easily dismisses is studies that show marriages do better where the woman is smarter than the man.
Well, I’m assuming that means women are marrying BETA men who are in successful marriages.
The problem is, there are a lot of all around JERKS in both the FEMALE and MALE spectrum and turning a whole SEX against you is retarded.
*I* have a higher IQ than my husband (he’s 135, I’m 157) and we started out broke together and built a business together. He’s the youngest of four brothers out of eleven children and he’s the pock-marked, hairiest, least attractive one of the bunch.
HE STILL CHEATED ON ME when the going got tough last year with an UGLY skank drug-addicted alcoholic woman older than me who looked so haggard and beat I FELT SORRY FOR HER.
What did I do after 23 years of marriage? Did I leave my husband? Nope. I forgave him and nursed him back to health when he injured himself after falling out of his truck like a buffoon drunk-driving asshole (even when he knows our daughter and I almost were killed by a drunk-driver when she was five years old).
So, get off your high-horse about how great men are and how evil wymmin are.
I NEVER put my life before my family (and I had modeling/acting/singing/song-writing/et al career opportunities). I was happy to be a housewife and homeschooling mother. I never learned to drive (my choice) and I’m probably the most modern yet old-fashioned woman in this day and age.
Should I hate every man for every male who molested me? Raped me? Abused me?
Should I leave my husband for being a jerk? Was he being an ‘alpha’ male after 23 years of marriage?
OY!
Delia, you’re a saint !
Wretchard, this was one of your best posts in a very long line of great ones.
“Underlying the new morality is not some notion of good or bad, but the preservation of privileges in an unstated but obvious hierarchy. Things are now ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’ in the old courtly sense. Did you forget yourself? Rise above your station”
Absolutely brilliant.
Whiskey you’re going a little over the edge here. While I agree that many women seek to reward only Alpha males and punish all other males, I don’t think it’s a overt conscious thought out decision by women to punish beta males politically. I think for the millions of air headed bimbos of the female persuasion it’s just a knee jerk instinctual reaction to reward the strong man. It’s instinct. But those women who can rise above their destructive instincts can be a productive member of society.
Dr. Mabuse: but the management callously added that into his job description over the years.
I know. But also the trouble was brewing for some time. Given that his job description expanded beyond the initial agreement, if I were in his shoes, I’d look for another environment where I would be able to do what I signed up for.
I was a teach too. But when my principal started to shove politics into our throats in excess of what was a tacit generally accepted nuisance level (Czechoslovakia, commie era, I were teaching at school for blind kids and almost all teachers there were political rejects and “renegades” or “reactionaries”), I simply got out.
OTOH, some people can’t handle kids well. My 1st X once tried to get a job in a kindergarten. She did quit after one day, the 4-5 yo “angels” made a hash of her in no time. She came home almost crying.
those women who can rise above their destructive instincts can be productive members of society.
Same can be said of men who rise above their destructive instincts. Judging from the Times article that Wretchard linked, the hooligans who tormented Peter Harvey weren’t all girls.
The instant realization of his utter worthlessness sank in the moment he realized what he had done.
“Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me.”
I don’t want to believe the stuff that Whiskey says but that doesn’t mean that what he says, or anyone else says, can’t be true just because we don’t want it to be so.
He has a view of the world. The true test is whether such a view has predictive power. Anything else is but fluff and garbage. In post #45 he has made predictions. Let us see how that turns out.
And that really is the only valid question–to what extent does the model have predictive power? If it does the fact that we don’t like the model is immaterial.
It takes a long time to become a man. I wasn’t much of one as a kid. Maybe I’m not much of one now. The only consolation is there’s been an improvement. I think. The one thread, the one glimmer in the dark cave that’s beckoned all these years has been the fluffy slippers.
Whenever the bad self alights beckoningly on my shoulders it’s the sight of the little things that turns the tide. The birthday card taped to the space above the desk, the fluffy slippers under the bed, and the sandwich in the child’s lunchbox. Then it occurred to me that in some true sense there is no perfect Someday out there. That is magic you bring with you. All you really need in someone to love is to find a modicum of decency and the spark of love. All else — the career, the looks, the sparkling with — are optional extras. I’ve been lucky to marry someone with all of the optional extras, but they remain that.
The trick to life is saying yes to it; and not being haunted by imaginary what might have beens you’ve been ‘cheated’ of. This day is always where you start. The strange thing is that if work at it well enough, you can look back and say “this is something only I could have done” and be content. But even at the end there is about it an air of mystery, something unfinished. It is that trailing ending that suggests more than anything else that the story goes on whether you are aware of it, or not. And if you want the story to go on you are content to know that it continues. Dostoevsky argued that we would all of us be pulled up to heaven by the one thing we could never betray or think ill of. For him it might have been a single onion, but for myself it is my wife’s fluffy slippers.
Delia: I forgave him
Once is fine. Don’t do it if it happens a second time. It would then happen a third and a fourth time too.
Just wait til the UN/World Court get oversight of the internet. Or maybe the Open Society Institute and His Right Loonybiscuit Lord Soros.
Nibbled to death by Nuts.
Tcobb/61
His model is predictive only in a specific limited demographic area. Affirmative in that scope would not be valid for other demographic or geographic spaces.
Wretchard (47): “Politics is the process of engagement, even if that engagement takes place in a funny farm.”
The Lunatics took over and became the ones running the insane asylum — and nobody stopped them.
This will be the epitaph over the grave of Western Civilization.
Baillie/64
Absolute control’s not possible. A great inconvenience, yes. But there are ways to skin a cat and any old dog can still learn a few new tricks.
But there’s no choice. Politics is the process of engagement …
Amen.
Whiskey @ 43: “Upper Class Black Harvard Professors like Skip Gates have the same TRIBE and self-interest with say, a street corner drug dealer in Baltimore.”
Not to disagree with your prediction of increasing tribalism once the utter failure of the liberal Best & Brightest becomes more clear to more people — but who is going to be in the Tribe?
The Cliff Notes version of the history of Europe is – white people killing & raping other white people. The Cliff Notes version of the history of Africa (pre-colonization) is black people killing & enslaving other black people. And you can guess what the Cliff Notes version of Chinese history says.
Yes, when the liberal elite’s crimes catch up with them, we will see a breakdown into smaller groups. But it may well be Texans of many different ancestries standing together against the hated Californians. Or well-armed tradesmen with different skin colors cleaning out the equally “diverse” faculty lounges at the local university.
The sad thing is that we are probably all going to live long enough to see whose prediction is closer to reality.
I think if I’m honest with myself, I’m really angry at men right about now and the feeling will dissipate with time and go back to the same feeling I have for blacks who cheered OJ getting off.
I just hope most men aren’t like Whiskey like I hope most blacks aren’t like the blacks who cheered the O.J. verdict.
It’s so easy to be unfair and harder to be discriminate because we all judge each other by ‘first appearances’ and that is the nature of the lizard brain within us all. We JUDGE first and ask QUEStions later via the survival of the fittest.
Is it racist if two white men size each other up and one figures he has an advantage by height/weight/muscle? Of course, not. BUT, you place a black/brown person against a white man and the drama ensues.
How do we get beyond ‘ethnicity’ and the unfair I.Q. challenges?
We don’t.
We can’t.
Unless: http://pajamasmedia.com/eddriscoll/2010/04/29/obamas-kinsley-esque-gaffe-youve-made-enough-money/#comment-16172
Fluffy slippers are sexy btw!
re. Whiskey #45 and 2X4 #64
I do not think that Whiskey attempts to generalize his theory for the whole of the mankind in the whole world. The domain he is addressing is basically the western world only.
I tend to give this theory some credence based on Obama’s appeal to blacks, hispanics and young women to get energized towards next midterm elections. We all can agree that Obama knows his electoral base.
So why not to wait and see how close to the reality Whiskey’s predictions are. Delia’s advice might be not called for. I do not see that Whiskey hates women.
“I don’t see anything wrong with that, that’s hard-wired into human nature via evolution.”
If that is true then you should share the genetic code.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/seqfacts.shtml
I’m thinking you haven’t a clue. Please provide evidence, retract your statement or explain the joke.
Marek, he generalizes his conclusions that are based on his locale for the whole US. Not sure whether he does that for the whole Western World. He did not say.
His predictions will likely be close when related to his locale and similar demographic locales, but won’t be for Miami, OK, or Decatur, TX — towns in flyover country with 15k-45k pop.
Rosinante, thx for pointing it out. An experiment has been conducted a while ago where little girls (3-4 yo) of different racial background (US) had to pick a doll that they liked most and over 80% picked up a “white” doll, regardless whether they were black or purple with green stripes. Thus I’d look at the “wiring” with all due skepticism.
Tribal discriminations seem to be purely a cultural phenomenon.
re #73
If Whiskey’s prediction is correct, even only for his locale and similar ones, then his theory has some merit, as limited as it might be.
However, if Whiskey’s locale represents a significant portion of US electorate then it could be quite useful for GOP/Tea Party strategists.
In the meantime, all I’m saying is let’s live and see.
“Fluffy slippers are sexy btw!”
Only on a woman.
“I just hope most men aren’t like
Whiskey“ your husband?What he did was reprehensible. Upon what basis did you forgive him? Forgiveness granted without the offender offering sincere repentance, based upon deep self-examination is self-protection for the forgiver and trying to avoid facing the lessons our experiences bring us.
Has he made amends by demonstrating that he’s faced up to the issues that motivated him to betray you? Part of his issues may be dissatisfaction with the marriage but if so, clearly he’s not being honest with you about it, which just compounds any denial.
And no, all men are not like Whiskey, many are far worse. I suspect whiskey will be there for his friends when most are nowhere to be found. It’s easy to interpret whiskeys views as misogynistic and racist, while ignoring the other possibility; a frankness in describing PC’s darkside; fundamental reverse racism and misandry.
Get some marriage counseling Delia, it sounds to me like you need it.
Wretchard’s 62:
I read that out loud to my wife. She smiled her sweet smile and said, “That is good.” We both agree. God’s peace and blessings to you, sir!
“the politically correct world is becoming very much like Mr. Peter Harvey’s classroom: a “caring place” seething with hatred; a place of forced gaiety, of smiles as mirthful as the Joker’s, a place you want to take five month’s vacation from knowing nothing will have changed when you get back.”
If that is so, as many of us suspect, then the future harvest that awaits should contain more than a few ‘Jokers’… Which brings to mind Alfred’s keen insight into that character, “some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
I for one suspect that the west’s PC is raising up more than a few of those. Perhaps Peter Harvey is the canary in the coalmine, the tip of the iceberg. And we are about to harvest a generation of moral barbarians.
Liberals will do anything to make it, whatever it is, to go away.
The English proved less rational than the Bolsheviks at responding to vandalism. In the Soviet Union defacing the people’s property would have earned a sterner response.
PA Cat @ 59
The problem is not whether men or women have destructive instincts; they both do. And they likely have destructive instincts in equal measure, because in many ways as others have noted, the instincts of men and women are just the flip sides of the same coin.
The problem is that while Men will generally freely admit to those destructive instincts, few women do. The male instincts are yan to the women’s yin. The male destructive instincts are very visible, overt, active and easily recognizable. The female destructive instincts on the other hand are more covert, deceptive, causal, illusive and difficult to describe, which gives many women the opportunity to deny their destructive instincts exist at all or to deny their full extent.
Women need to take full responsibility for their destructive instincts. I think the perception that many men have is that too many women refuse to take responsibility for their actions and their destructive instincts, and that is why many men, like Whiskey, simply don’t trust women.
Clockwork Orange, here we are.
And Whiskey hates women, he doesn’t just mistrust us. With a monomaniacal obsession.
Men will generally freely admit to those destructive instincts
Not the self-righteous liberals I know. It seems to me that a good many liberal men are in deep denial about their destructiveness. Consider the sterling examples that infest the current Congress.
PA Cat, you mean their altruism, right?
That particular altruism that wants to kill all the conservatives so they can build a better world. That is progressive and constructive, not destructive.
/sarc
The most dangerous thing about blaming women for our current cultural problems is that a) we can’t get rid of women; they are half of the human race; b) the distract from the bigger problem: men have let themselves get pansified; not feminized (real femininity is something as unachievable to men as felinity). This BS is only a problem if we take it. To go blame someone else is to play the Left’s game. Reject it. Things start and end right where each of us sit.
THANK you! from the Other half. Also, I may say that millions, even billions of us aren’t onboard with the Left’s agenda. Whiskey, give it a rest already!
#55 Delia – Feel better now? To hear you talk one might think that only men cheat, and that only women sacrifice for the marriage. You’ve reacted to your circumstances with angry flailing, and Whiskey has responded in another way. You’re not so different, you two.
There is one difference though: notice the comment from Marie Claude? You’re a saint! Men who experience what you have are on their own. Their male friends don’t want to hear about. Suck it up boyo.
This is an old problem. Look at all the weird reasons the Roman Empire fell; same with the Greeks, and every other civilization who thought they were God. Nowadays seems like a redo of Isaiah chapter 3, with men and women, old and young, parents and children, and good and evil, switching roles.
I just remember when I surfed on islamist blogs and that I used the word “islamist”, the guis there would respond that there is no difference with the word “muslim”, that we are just islamophobe. Now, the muslim communauty in France is surprisingly for our anti-burqa law, they don’t consider that those who force women to wear the outfit as “good” muslims, but as a “sect”. The last incident highlighted their opinion, a woman who was driving her car and wearing a burqa got a fine €22. She assimilated the gendarmerie act as anti-muslim ‘s and made a press conference, where she said she would take her case into trial, our government responded by a investigation of her background, she is living with a islamist that has already 3 others spouses (ala islamist fashion), living in nearby houses too, he has from them 12 children, all these nice one-parent families are subventionned by the state. Our minister of “interieur” threaten the islmaist to remove his french nationality (that he got a decade ago in marrying a french woman). The error that this islamist made was that in a press conference (bizarre, how they like such a public mean) that in France it is allowed to have mistresses. This is where the true muslim got angry, this is not allowed by Koran, and all condamned the guy, saying he is a dishonnor for their communauty,that he belongs to a sect, for they fear that they would be assimilate with such “muslims”. Now, since then, the woman’s father, apparently a french, went to the Police’s station to complain about his “step-son: 2 months ago he had is daughter on phone, she was crying, her “fiancé” had beaten her,and when her dad ask to get his grand-children on the phone, she replied him that they were locked in another room with their father, who was teaching them Koran.
The moral of the story, is that the left and the right parties finally agreed on the same project for the anti-burqa law, also cautionned by the moderate muslims.
Wretchard:
“It’s a cave of whispers, the new Sound of Silence.”
What’s new? Nothing. It’s neo.
…-
“The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia
“Between 2003 and 2006, three teams of researchers from the Memorial Society in St Petersburg, Moscow and Perm recovered several hundred family archives (letters, diaries, personal papers, memoirs, photographs and artefacts) that had been concealed by the survivors of the Stalin Terror in secret drawers and under mattresses in private homes across Russia. In each family extensive interviews were carried out with the oldest relatives, who were able to explain the context of these private documents and relate them to the family’s history. This represents a unique collection of documents and testimony about private life in the Stalin period, reflecting the interior world of ordinary families and individuals.
A selection of these archives, transcripts and sound extracts of the interviews, and English translations of some of the transcripts can be accessed on this site.”
http://www.orlandofiges.com/
I predict that the sun is going to rise in the east tomorrow.
That California public employee unions will oppose cuts in state spending.
That little kids will play in the surf on Florida beaches.
That their moms will worry about looking fat in their bathing suits.
That upwards of 90 percent of those renting “Murder She Wrote” DVDs from Netflix will be women over 55.
That when I take my run today, I will see a bird in my neighborhood.
That very few of those who go to church tomorrow will be Muslims.
I predict donuts will be served after some of those church services. Glazed *and* chocolate-covered. Bavarian creme, uhhh, not so much.
I predict 1-1/2 inches of rain … somewhere.
Let’s see how I do.
“The need to judge every act within the new hierarchy…”
I believe the main thrust of the left’s agenda is to destroy confidence in our ability to make judgments of any kind. Judgment, once the hallmark of an adult, is now being reserved to the decision-makers. Our motto is now supposed to be “who am I to judge?”
Witness the undercutting of any notion of objective principles, the devaluing of experience, the ever-increasing demands that we defer to “expert” judgment, the profusion of intricate laws which make it nearly impossible for ordinary citizens to comply without expert help, the tightening control over the approved educational path that produces said experts, and the outraged “who the hell are _you_ to question me” and “if you disagree with me you are, by definition, either stupid or evil” attitude sported by our would-be rulers.
twobyfour/67
I hope you are right. But I am old, Gandalf, and have seen far too much human hubris and plain, old fashioned vainglory.
PA Cat,
-Men will generally freely admit to those destructive instincts
“Not the self-righteous liberals I know.” You’re absolutely right there. That’s why I can’t blame the destructiveness of the left all on women.
Whiskey, I still think you are an optimist.
Tribal politics are the most powerful. They ALWAYS work. Why? Because you can trust your tribe.
Bullfeathers! I can’t even trust members of my extended family. And now I’m supposed to trust a complete stranger just because he looks like me? Nonsense!
Ever heard of Bernie Madoff? He ripped off other Jews. Ever heard of Yasser Arafat? He ripped off other Palestinians. Salt Lake City is a haven for confidence artists because too many Mormons will trust their money to con men who claim to be Mormon.
Excuse me, but if Jews betray other Jews, Palestinians betray other Palestinians, and Mormons betray other Mormons, precisely what tribe can be trusted?
Beware of quislings who advocate tribal politics.
Here Whiskey, This youtube video looks like it was MADE for you!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRgB2eeHZEw
(or maybe you commissioned it???)
Wretchard@62:
“All you really need in someone to love is to find a modicum of decency and the spark of love.”
And most of all:
“The trick to life is saying yes to it; and not being haunted by imaginary what might have beens you’ve been ‘cheated’ of. This day is always where you start.”
This cut really deep for me. Somehow you have a way of making a context that lets bits of wisdom hit their mark, and not be processed as clichés.
And Wretchard — your wife is a lucky woman.
From Chad @ 16:
Much more depressing I fear. More akin to Dalrymple’s views and astute observations. Begin below. If it was Alex, we could deal with that. It is much more …. low… I think. More along the lines of Soma with out the denign after-effects. A heroin hangover of gargantuan proportions.
“Life At the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass” by ‘Theodore Dalrymple’
Today is “el Megamarche en Dallas” to protest the new Arizona law. The question is: Who decides that a law in another state is fodder for ‘un megamarche’? In a place that is not governed by the dictates of that law. That Dear Readers is the one that should have you awake at night asking questions like, “Is the Republic already co-opted unto death? Already Lost?”
W @ 32 – I’m not so sure we can be rid of the Left. As you noted in your words “eternal grifter,” the danger is always there. Utopianism and the dream of ruling the world are as old as the human race. So is the fight against them.
Alexis @ 95 – perhaps the exceptions prove the rule? Just because the individual members of the tribe can’t trust each other, doesn’t mean they don’t trust the members of other tribes even less. Sad to say.
Tribal politics are the most powerful. They ALWAYS work. Why? Because you can trust your tribe. The reason America was willingly changed from an 80% White (and mostly working-middle class) nation to one barely 66%, where to “buy” decent housing, neighbors, safety, requires an upper middle class lifestyle for the most part, is the dissolution of the White Middle/Working Class TRIBE by women free to pursue Alphas.
Great googly moogly, whiskey! There’s always just enough truth to your rantings, not to mention emotional attraction, but dude, slow down and take a breath now and then, this is turning into concept salad, whirled peas.
Remember, large parts of this country, and large swaths of the population, are still intact, until and unless the Obamanation actually makes good on its promises. Our dysfunctions here in beautiful Los Angelees are not universal, and neither are the ravings of Obambus.
BAP @ 91:
Witness the undercutting of any notion of objective principles, the devaluing of experience, the ever-increasing demands that we defer to “expert” judgment, the profusion of intricate laws which make it nearly impossible for ordinary citizens to comply without expert help, the tightening control over the approved educational path that produces said experts, and the outraged “who the hell are _you_ to question me” and “if you disagree with me you are, by definition, either stupid or evil” attitude sported by our would-be rulers.
I think you are right that it is all of a piece. Glenn Beck the other night was saying that the Founders considered having an informed citizenry/electorate essential to the health of the Republic, whereas today’s elites in charge of government, media, and education, seem hell-bent on (a) churning out mis-educated young people from the public schools, (b) using the media to distort and suppress information, arriving at the end-game of (c) having the government take more and more control because the dear citizens are incapable of choosing for themselves.
Destroy morality and you destroy the reasons (the why) for making judgments.
Destroy discernment and critical thinking via substandard education and you destroy the means (the how) for making judgments.
What results is a population ripe for enslavement. They do not know their history & why certain laws and traditions were established in the first place. They do not know what they believe or why they believe it. They cannot make a cogent argument in defense of anything. “There’s no such thing as absolute truth” and “Nobody has a right to impose their values on someone else” sound about as good as anything else to this kind of population. They have been taught to go along to get along (baaaaa!), and, alas, that they do.
Lord of the Flies anyone?
KareninPA @97
Wretchard@62:
And most of all:
“The trick to life is saying yes to it; and not being haunted by imaginary what might have beens you’ve been ‘cheated’ of. This day is always where you start.”
Morita developed an effective therapy on just this concept. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morita_therapy
#96 wws,
very funny !
we have the same parodies, but less trash !
McQ comments on Wretchard’s venture into the world of PC over at QandO:
“I wonder at times where our western civilization is headed. I see signs of resistance to the slide toward oblivion, but for the most part I see things which convince me that slide is almost unrecoverable.
While reading the Belmont Club, I find that Richard Fernandez seems to be seeing the same thing. And he brings two examples to the fore that signal the extent of our decent, not whether or not we’re actually sliding toward the inevitable end.”
Read the whole post here:
http://www.qando.net/?p=8209
whiskey, I just don’t buy the “Cosi Fan Tutte” routine. Way back in the Middle Ages, i.e., around 1955, we were being told that women were, by instinct, the nurturing sex. That all women wanted to get married, have a brood, drive station wagons, and frost cupcakes for little Johnny’s school bake sale. To supplement the argument that this was how women were hard-wired, all sorts of studies and statistics were trotted out: little girls’ preferences for baby dolls and playing house, wedding dress obsessions, women’s magazine polls, the viewership of Lucy’s baby episode, etc.
This was the consensus of the culture and the culture’s experts: Cosi Fan Tutte = The Donna Reed Show.
Now, some 50-odd years later, you are telling us that, no, Cosi Fan Tutte *really* = “Caged Heat.” (With the caveat that “tutte” does not include dried-up old married prunes over 40.) And to supplement that argument, you, too, trot out all sorts of “studies” and “statisics” — women’s magazine polls, The View viewership, Sandra Bullock’s marriage, Obama voters, etc.
Call me skeptical because (1) your characterization of women does not resemble in any way, shape, or form a single one of the eleven women I know personally and very well (my five sisters, the six women in my department at work), and (2) your characterization is as laughably one-dimensional as was the Suzie Homemaker of the 1950s, i.e. a zeitgeist stereotype bordering on a caricature. The 1950s gal was a “Madonna” to your “whore.”
I don’t think it’s nearly so much hard-wiring as it is culture- and media-driven. After the massive blood-letting of WWII, and in the interest of getting women out of the factories & back into the homes so the men could have their jobs back, the cultural elites recognized that it was in American society’s interest to promote the domestic standard. Our cultural elites now are almost all marxist-feminists. They (mistakenly) believe that it is in American society’s best interest to promote a standard of female sexual “liberation,” whimsical autonomy & consumer fashionism.
Go back further in time in American culture and you have the jazz age flappers. Before that, Gibson girls. (Note the radical body-image differences between the two, among other things.)
Victorian women, frontier women, Clara Barton, Abigail Adams, Emma Goldman, Evelyn Nesbit, Susan B. Anthony, Emily Dickinson, Jane Addams, Harriet Beecher Stowe … cripes, I don’t see how these women, each significant and influential in her time, could possibly be lumped together into a one-size-fits-all evolutionary psychological profile a la whiskey.
I would love to know how Clara Barton was hard-wired as a beta-male-hating leftist, for example. Curious how none of her biographers has ever been able to explain how being a born carrier of the Bootlicking Harem Slut gene led her to give aid and comfort thousands of wounded and dying soldiers in Civil War field hospitals. Maybe she was working her way up to sleeping with Ulysses S. Grant? No, no. Abe Lincoln. She was really after Mr. Big. That’s the ticket. Patch up soldiers, get invited to the White House, bag POTUS, set for life. State dinners, oooh, the gowns! The china! The gossip!
Clara Barton, Carrie Bradshaw, what’s the difference?
Cosi Fan Tutte.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x86ryf_isabelle-adjani-la-journee-de-la-ju_shortfilms
a movie treats the British teacher dilemn in a classroom of hooligans in France
no need to understand the dialogues, images are telling the story
I’m quite late to this thread, but I was early in foreseeing the highlighted story. Back in January I posted a more accurate acronym definition for PC. And it coincides with what just about every commenter has said today. Politcally Cowered.
Could poor Mr. Harvey be any more Politically Cowered than that? Oh yes. He might have continued to endure it.
Here’s the text of what I wrote.
I’m quite late to this thread, but I was early in foreseeing the highlighted story. Back in January I posted a more accurate acronym definition for PC. And it coincides with what just about every commenter has said today. Politcally Cowered.
Could poor Mr. Harvey be any more Politically Cowered than that? Oh yes. He might have continued to endure it.
Here’s the text of what I wrote.
Moniker:
What whiskey is proposing is, in effect, a supertribe analogous to Islam.
The “white” identity is essentially a negative identity, not a positive one. It comprises people who have nothing culturally in common but share similar skin coloration.
I think it is wisest to trust people based upon their personal reputations. Basing trust upon racial classification is sheer foolishness. I would rather trust Richard Fernandez than John Kerry any day. I would rather trust Thomas Sowell than Keith Olbermann.
Yet, there are those who would claim that “white = trustworthy”. That just isn’t so.
Real tribes are based upon culture, not skin color.
Test. Two posts are presumably in “screening.” It contains only one link, so the delay is odd.
The post first contains errors. This is an attempt to check on the cause. If this posts, I’ll resubmit again with the link removed.
Political correctness is gradually replacing common sense and natural law with an unstated but controlling code of manners. Certain things cannot be said; certain illegal things are legal and vice versa; things though evident may not exist.
Illegal immigration is but one area where the breakdown of law and order has been papered over with PC, exacerbating the problem.
It is bad enough that the federal government, whose job it is to control the borders, will not do it.
It is worse that they expect states and private citizens who are under a de facto invasion from a collapsing Mexico to pretend not to notice.
It is worse still for the federal government, which created the problem in the first place, to criticize a state for doing what the feds should but won’t do in response to an urgent situation.
Governor Brewer and the Arizona legislature have probably gotten more condemnation and reaction from other American elected officials than have the illegal aliens pouring across the border. In the Dem-prog worldview, America and Americans are always the problem. We were bad for saying that foreigners should not have been flying passenger planes into NYC buildings. We are bad for saying that the government should not be letting foreigners drive vehicles stuffed with drugs and human cargo across our unprotected southern border.
(BTW, I’m surprised none of the elites has lectured us, re: the illegals, that we need to be asking ourselves, “Why do they love us so?”)
Verboten actions > verboten speech > verboten thought.
When things descend to the level of verboten thought, one of two things tends to happen: an explosive reaction on the part of the verbot-ees, or doubling down by the verbot-ers and the persecution of thought itself.
Oh goodee! Our free health care choices will now include red pill, blue pill, or padded cell!
I don’t know if this is entirely accurate, but lately I’ve come to think that there really are no limits to the missionary zeal of leftists, i.e. there is no real liberty that they are prepared to tolerate in any amount. Not a smidgeon. Something in the leftist brain is absolutely and profoundly insatiable with the desire to control. It must be 100%. Why is this? A nation ordered on liberty is somehow virile enough to tolerate certain amounts of antithetical currents within it. A nation ordered by tyranny, by contrast, cannot seem to tolerate any freedom that matters. Like, whatever you do, DON’T teach the slaves to read! I guess there’s something in the DNA of tyranny that recognizes that even a nano-germ of real freedom is an existential threat to it.
Hence why Obama’s thin-skinned reactions to criticism, his demonstrated need to take on, say, private citizens (like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh) in tit-for-tat debate, and his mocking/goading of Tea Partiers, concern me. Such conduct is not just unstatemesmanlike (which it is). But it is also the mentality and behavior of a tyrant. The podium of the POTUS should be the most accommodating platform in the world of a leader in relationship to the dissent of his fellow citizens. Most POTUSes have expressed this accommodation by ignoring the Limbaugh/Palin/Tea Party kind of stuff. Even though it may privately irk them, they will not admit as much when the cameras and mics are on. Obama? He seems constitutionally incapable of stuffing it. Come to think of it, this isn’t just the behavior of a tyrant. Street punks also act like this. Been dissed? Diss back. “Get in their face.” You do not ever, ever walk away from a diss.
Some people think the abnegation of physical force by legitimate authority means that force goes away and makes the world a kinder, gentler place. One example of this idea is the banishing of corporal punishment in schools or by parents. In fact, the use of force does not go away but devolves to the next lowest level that is willing to use it. In other words it goes to the bullies. Rule by bullies is not kinder and gentler. There are now classrooms and families totally dominated and terrorized by 11 year olds. I sympathize with the teacher in question.
A retired teacher
(I retired early, in part because of this)
Bogie Wheel @106 et al
On women: it’s quite simple. Posts here reveal that women still have to check either the “Eve” or “Mary” box. How unimaginative and how oblivious to reality we are and how slow history and stereotypes are to change when they are useful.
Incidentally, I think some of us come dangerously near to inflicting the same thing on men: alpha or beta?
MaryJ, you’ve forgotten Magdalene.
Dunno, knew two Eves, both very prototypical in their own unique way. Enough Alices to Zuzanas, though, that I stereotype in bell curves.
And of course, I am Alpha and Omega. Do I contradict myself? I can contradict myself, I am multitudes.
Bogie Wheel @109: Yes, there is no end to leftist tyranny. So said CS Lewis: “Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
I have seen, over the years, Conservatives offer explanations for PC, similar to Wretchard’s, and prescriptions to destroy PC, and of course these prescriptions have always failed. Miserably. Indeed, PC has only grown in strength over the years. This despite fourteen years of South Park ridicule. Most men finding it ridiculous. And so on.
So, IMHO it is vital to understand what DRIVES PC, in terms of being strong, supported, and the dominant values of our Post-Christian culture.
If Wretchard and “Takuan Seiyo” at Brussels Journal is correct, it is merely “pod people” (Seiyo’s phrase) that have had mind-control seizure. Merely expose the evil-doer, and folks will rise up in their own self-interest. Producing a shining Constitutional republic of limited government.
This has never happened despite more than 50 years of trying.
Look at institutions under female dominance (and my argument is to push out female dominance, not kinder-kuche-kirche which is a dead end). TV went from being dominated by programming for men in the 1970′s to totally female today. Advertising, the same, as well as Education, and government work. TV Commercials feature mostly Black actors, something easily understood once the ads are studied. The ads are all aimed at White women, and feature PC dogma of Black nuclear families (itself rare given the 70%+ rate of Black illegitimacy nationwide).
I do not think practically, White women who are under say, 55 or so can be reached with any argument against PC. PC is mainly a weapon to banish icky Beta Males, make them feminized, and destroy any limits on pursuit of Alphas, with a good dose of “feelings” of “White=racist, boring” and the well known tropes of cultural relativism, and so on.
Why? Because sexual/emotional interests trump ordinary political/economic ones. Such as say, women being extraordinarily vulnerable to crime, and issues of personal safety, yet spending most of their time railing against “aggressive” and “icky” beta males who violated some social taboo and made them feel “unsafe” … yet real issues of those committing crimes (mostly Black and Hispanic men) go unaddressed by White women, who are the most vulnerable. The answer is of course the trade-off of making the icky Beta guys be put in their place is stronger than the threat of crime which can be abated by security buildings, and so on, plus the presence of Alpha males in high-Wealth, high-crime cities.
Every young women would want to live in “glamorous” New York, few would choose “boring” Salt Lake City, and that’s understandable from a mating market perspective.
HOWEVER, older White women past 55, have different criteria. They are not in the mating market, and so sexual/emotional issues have less interest to them than wealth preservation, personal safety, and an orderly, high-trust society that throws off lots of wealth to keep them safe and secure.
What is obvious but counter-intuitive is that women are very, VERY risk-friendly when it comes to pursuit of Alpha males and social control of Beta males. This only switches whem women finally age out of being able to attract Alphas.
IMHO, all this is driven by a change in technology even greater in impact than the nuclear bomb: the pill and condom as cheap, affordable, universal contraception, and rising living standards for women. Just like nuclear power can obliterate NYC or power it cleanly and with little danger, if used properly, so too can contraception and better living standards for women provide a near-utopia or total dystopia depending on how that freedom is used and controlled.
Single women voted Obama 70-29. Women broadly (all women) voted Obama. White women voted for Obama by a majority (the latter two figures not at hand). Women were broadly, the margin of victory for Obama. They have formed (White women in particular) the margin of victory for Democratic candidates since Kennedy. IMHO this is due to the broad social changes that are unprecedented in human history: contraception and increased earnings and freedom for women. Most of this is good, but there is bad as well.
We have today a strange, chivalrous, White-Knight, Victorian era conception of women at odds with the reality: Ke$ha and Lady Gaga being the most popular young female singers, imitated ad nauseum on YouTube by teen girls, raunchy and drunken behavior on the lower end, and fights over the few Alpha men on the upper end. The Harvard Law student whose emails detailing her arguments that she remained open to the argument that Blacks may have lower average IQs, was the result of a former friend releasing said emails over an argument over a “hot guy.” I.E. the former friend had him, and the girl took him.
Satoshi Kanazawa in “Evolutionary Psychological Foundations of Civil Wars” posits ever-increasing violence from young men when denied reproduction. I think it is useful to look at the most extreme: China. There you see, “bachelor males” going into Kindergartens and killing little kids. Looking at the situation as merely primates acting out, the motivation is obvious. Older guys reaching reproductive death kill the Big Shot’s kids. [In urban areas the Big Men amass astonishing harems in a nation deeply short of women.] Extreme situations help us isolate social dynamics and patterns.
Here in the West, most men have not a clue as to how to deal with, and handle women’s shaming tactics, and so on, and the obvious double standards around men (Alpha Males are not “guilty of rape-rape” according to Whoopi, Joe Average “makes me uncomfortable when he disagrees with me.”) Meanwile Ke$ha and Lady Gaga are role models. Most men in the West have yet to have a cultural message that women are just as flawed as they are, just as subject to sexual and emotional drives. That women are human and flawed, not pedestal-dwelling Angels (or demons).
I propose a further test of my theory. IF I am correct (PC as the outcome of female power aimed at suppressing Beta Males and elevating Alpha ones), then we should see its emergence in non-Western societies, where Western style rising income for women, and contraception, and anonymous urban living and atomization occur.
Test societies would include: Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Coastal China, and perhaps a few other places I cannot think of.
I think MC (bless her heart) was poking me a bit with the “Saint” comment.
I’m no Saint. Not hardly.
My husband has faults and for every one of his I can find ten of my own.
The guy I married is actually a very good person and as flawed as he is (we were both molested as children, he by his eldest brother) so am I.
My husband never had a wandering eye in all of our 23 married + 1 year not-married together (but he sure kept a quick eye out when any man noticed me to the point of ogling rudely and I’m glad he was/is protective of me in that way). Much of what came to light last year was a crucial melt-down tipping point of a man I love but didn’t know his internal struggles with his own demons as well as I thought. It turns out he was addicted to pain-killers and the pathetic mess of a woman he had sex with was his pain-killer provider/dealer (she gets her massive legal prescripts because of extensive back and brain surgery).
He refuses counseling on the basis of having to face his molestation issues (and because he also became a perp and molested his own younger sister as a child [who is my exact age coincidentally] and therefore he has a lot of shame and guilt himself).
Between the two of us, we are a hot mess. We have worked through a LOT of turmoil but obviously the fat lady hasn’t sang on this as of yet. But, name me a ‘perfect’ marriage and I’ll name you some really good actors. We aren’t all tough as nails. We often deny our frailty out of fear of looking weak and therefore opening ourselves up to ridicule and stereotypes. Men have hearts and feelings too and they can be hurt just as badly as any woman.
As morality goes… If the teachers ‘preach’ the opposite of morality, parents are pretty well screwed (no matter how hard they may try to instill it) unless they home-school and thusly, our society is screwed if we have no morals because wanting our freedom means being grown-ups with full functioning conscience minds and knowing right from wrong and if ‘right from wrong’ is so damnably skewed we can’t even make judgment calls without being castigated.
I touched on this a bit on a PJM post here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2010/04/29/the-truth-about-the-redgraves/#comment-19745
Men can be intelligent, brave and SENSITIVE too. Why is that so hard for some people to comprehend? Why do some men call other men pussified if they have empathy? It’s just weird. From Wretchard’s posts, I never get the sense that he’s a super-duper macho guy but quite the opposite. ‘Wretch’ has given me the impression of a very deep-thinking, empathic, incredibly intelligent person with a huge streak of kindness. If only there were more Richard Fernandez types in this world.
I’m quite late to this thread (even before a spam filter altercation), but I was early in foreseeing the highlighted story.
Back in January I posted a more up-to-date definition for the acronym “PC,” and it coincides with what just about every commenter has said today. Politically Cowered.
Could poor Mr. Harvey be any more Politically Cowered than that? Oh yes. He might have continued to endure it.
Here’s the text of what I wrote.
Delia, I am not sure someone is claiming that empathy is an attribute of pussification. Nor, I think, that applies to sensitivity–though that term has undergone a considerable deconstructive modulation.
It is rather caricatures of the above, their social behavioral derivatives that would be considered as symptoms of pussification–the outward, ostentatious manifestations that are essentially quid-quo-pro currency in games people play, just cranked up volume, no depth.
Somewhat analogous to “bleeding heart” liberal. No such a thing. It is just a kabuki theater, a ritual, to buy enough indulgences and a high horse for the pretense and at the same time a coverup that there is really nothing there.
116. twobyfour,
Well, it seems to me that the most cruelty to men comes from men to men. Men are violent towards each other and those less violent men are considered ‘wusses’ by other men and bullied.
If a guy is sensitive and gentle he’s called ‘gay’ by other men, certainly not by women (for the most part).
Is art ‘feminine’? Some of the greatest artists are men and ‘art’ has been around long before the evil ‘feminism’. Were they ‘manly’ men? What *IS* a manly man?
Men are so damned mean to each other anyhow. ‘Ball-tapping’? OUCH!
Women can be catty to each other but I hope we don’t start snapping at each other’s breasts as a power play. lol
Delia @117
“Ball-tapping”?
What circles do you run around in? I’ve never known anyone to engage in the practice!
Whiskey @ 114: “IF I am correct (PC as the outcome of female power aimed at suppressing Beta Males and elevating Alpha ones), then we should see its emergence in non-Western societies …”
Might not have to go to Singapore, Whiskey. How about this as another test of your hypothesis:
The big picture is that Western society is on the brink of Peak Government, as the governmental need to keep borrowing runs into reality. As you have pointed out about the current “man-cession”, women have been spared the worst of the present recession — so far. That is in part due to women disproportionately doing overhead-type office work for government agencies and government-supported academia/teaching/health care. When government cash flow hits the wall, women will thus inevitably be disproportionately affected. Teaching & overhead administration jobs either see pay cuts or outright elimination. Welfare support for single mothers will also get seriously eroded — no money left.
This “fem-cession” is coming soon to a government near you. Given your model of PC, what do you think will be the observable consequences with Western women, Whiskey?
Delia,
Certainly, I can get into a fist fight with another dude and break his nose, then offer my hand and shake his. I don’t like breaking noses too much, so I do generally avoid those kind of situation–got my nose broken once so I do know how that feels (I can empathize!
)
Cat fights… If I recall, you don’t have many female friends. If you had, you’d know that that they are far more vicious. If you remove a veneer of civilization, say you compare “boys” and “girls” gangs, where cruelty is concerned, girls seem to have an upper hand.
Anecdotal, maybe.
Men generally are more physical and their cruelty has a sunset clause–end of fight. Women are working more in emotional space and with their tendency to remember the “wrongs” til eternity, they tear you with their nails into tiny shreds, and not just once.
Of course, we are individuals and our mileage varies.
Aristide,
Delia @117: “Ball-tapping”
I was wondering what that is, never heard of that before. I think I don’t want to know.
119. Aristide
Apparently the same ‘circle-jerk’ you do, sir/madame!
Here ya go, it ain’t purdy:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ask-dr-helen-does-society-encourage-genital-assault-against-men/
I’m a full-grown woman and I still think boys are weird. Boys hitting each other’s testicles for fun? Oy vey! Hazing ain’t any better. You men-folks is just plain sadistic to each other. heh
121. twobyfour,
Anecdotally, as my husband has aged he feels much more vulnerable and physically weak. No matter how hard he works his body, it just doesn’t do the things it used to do in complete accordance with what his youthful body once did and he finds himself feeling frustrated and afraid of what his and our future will be if by the time we can finally ‘retire’ if there will be any damned enjoyment in it when we are achin’ and a creakin’!
It’s my birthday in 11 days. I turn 44 and I look (on a good day) 24 (I still get carded for my I.D.). I keep physically fit and take really good care of myself. My hubby is 49 and looks 55 (on a good day) and no matter how hard I try to encourage him to take supplements and take better care of himself and eat right, he refuses and as much as I love him dearly I don’t want to be a ‘nag’ so I try to sneak as many ‘healthy’ things into his diet as possible. He also had the unfortunate ‘auburn’-hair curse of premature gray hair as a youth and now he’s balding (but not as badly as his two eldest brothers).
My ring fingers are longer than my index fingers which means I had more testosterone in the womb and yet I’m a girly-girl. My little sister was a super aggressive jock and into sports as a youth and later married a Mormon (3rd son) with whom she had three children with but eventually left for a young stud. She tired of the young stud and eventually married a slightly younger male who she is ‘da boss of’. She recently gave birth to a boy (his first and only [I'm sure] child) at the age of 41.
Her husband recently took a $8.50 an hour pay drop and they are in for a hurtin’. My sister is a dingbat of the highest order. God bless her but she chose to pop out kids with a man who she left and later committed suicide because he was a dolt in his next marriage and couldn’t handle the responsibility.
As to morality?
If druggies and alkies weren’t a problem we’d have a freer society. The problemmo is, we DO have drug and alcohol problems in our country.
You want REAL freedom? Give everyone their vice of choice freely without jail time and Impose stiff penalties for folks who choose to be reprobates:
Porn addicts should be fired if they download it ON THE JOB.
Alcoholics and drug addicts should be REFUSED all medical treatment if they CANNOT afford it.
High-risk sexual behavior should be abhorred rather than ‘excused’ as a ‘man just spreadin’ his seed with a ‘whore’.
Are we EVER going to grow up or are we REGRESSING as a people?
Our whole economy is going to shit because people no longer have morals. There is NO SHAME any longer.
Pathetic and depressing to say the least.
Delia,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuMZ73mT5zM
124. Marie Claude,
AWESOME!
Only, I actually fit a lot of the male quantifiers in that vid.
Where do *I* the computer geek fit in to that mess? I’m visual (artist), Cerebral (thinker) talker (blogger), pretty (luck-of-the-draw).
Men are (on averages) smarter than women in IQ.
The whole “EQ” (empathy quotient) thing is a bit cheesy imho. Bill [Slick Willy] Clinton ‘felt’ yer pain while he was ramming his crooked cock in the mouth of a hired girl the same age of his daughter.
Anyone can ‘fake’ caring. I think we call them ‘sociopaths’?
Incidentally, I’m still trying to get over my food porn addiction (Anthony Bourdaine ohh la la), but, as of yet, I don’t think I’ve seen a stalk of broccoli bitch slapped, pissed on, jizzed (blue cheese dressing doesn’t count) on, back-doored to the point of needing surgery and I’m not even sure if THAT is cruel or not by this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/science/22angi.html?_r=2
It used to be, the creeps were outnumbered by the decent.
Nowadays? I’m not so sure.
We’ve really devolved and the internet is proof positive of that.
The scum always rises to the top.
Sad innit?
Wretchard (#47): “calmly put away that 7 pound dumbbell”
After carefully wiping it clean of fingerprints and blood.
I should have known that Marie-Claude would beat me to a reference to Skirt Day.
In an abrupt change of pace:
Delia, if I may offer some unsolicited advice: Your #55 comment raises loud alarm bells, and not only due to the cheating. Permit me to strongly recommend marriage counseling. Your later comments indicate that you are well aware of some deeper problems, which is obviously a plus, but is not necessarily sufficient to solve your problems. Counseling is not for everyone, and I myself am not particularly partial to it, but it can be invaluable, and sometimes necessary. I certainly understand your husband’s reluctance to enter into it, but based solely on the quick and incomplete portrayal you’ve provided of your marriage… well, as I said, I hear alarm bells.
All this advice offered for what it’s worth; apologies if I am being overly intrusive or stating what is already obvious to you. It’s your life and your decision; whatever course you follow, I wish you the best.
126. Bob,
There’s no such thing as ‘unsolicited’ on the internet. You ‘share’ you ‘bare’.
I appreciate your advice but marriage counseling is a joke. When I was going through my anorexia I ran psychological circles around my psychiatrists and they didn’t help one iota (except to increase my ever-expanding doubts about the medical community in general which is why I home-birthed with a mid-wife rather than submit myself to a male-dominated prenatal care regime where women are hoisted into demeaning positions for a good ‘look-see’).
Personally, I’d rather die than have some asshole ‘doctor’ put me up in ‘stirrups’ which is why I stay fit and take care of myself so that I don’t *need* a doctor. In the last 20 years I’ve seen a doctor about 12 times total.
Tell me, Bob, how many times have YOU have been subjected to humiliating procedures by a FEMALE doctor?
Male doctors/scientists in the USA treat women like test-subjects.
Women’s health issues are just NOW getting some real coverage and men who have had their boners ‘saved’ with Viagra piss and moan?
PUHLEASEEEEE.
P.S. Freud was a clitoris envying douchebag of the highest order. Oops. Did I ‘slip’?
Just a lil’ info to get some of you (men AND women) up to date as to how the male-dominated medical profession treats women:
http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/unnecessary-pap-smears/
It’s despicable and hardly anyone covers this issue.
You guys think you have it bad? At least your junk is EXTERNAL!
“I turn 44 … My hubby is 49 …”… lemme see, hmmm, “aged”…
Sigh. Kids these days…
OK, I am only 56, but that’s “only”. I’d be a “youngster” to some posters here. Retirement is the last thing on my mind. Perhaps because I don’t expect much of an opportunity. So I’ll be pushing my husk until pushing up daisies time.
Yea, things are a bit slower, I noticed when I tried to stay my ground against a speeding sports car a few year back… took a bit longer to get the husk cooperating than, say, 10 years back.
Anyone can ‘fake’ caring. I think we call them ’sociopaths’?
Well I usually call them liberals, however there may be some fine line there that separates them from sociopaths. Perhaps it is the degree of awareness that the facade is fake. Some people realizing that stop being liberals. Other cross the red line.
Of course, not all sociopaths are liberal. But a lot of them are, it is such a good racket!
Breaking news, car bomb in Times Square fails to detonate.
They’re here.
whiskey @ 26:
And you have finally gone too far, boy. STFU. Want to see who is beta? I bet any Veteran who is the real McCoy could make you cry. Now stop your sniveling and get a life.
Delia (#127):
“I stay fit and take care of myself so that I don’t *need* a doctor”
Wise choice. On the other hand, if you actually need a doctor, it would be foolish to avoid seeing one. The only reason I allowed myself to offer the counseling advice was that, based on my necessarily limited understanding of what you wrote here, it seemed to me as if you need some qualified outside help.
I grant that anyone can call themselves a “marriage counselor” (and licensing requirements don’t help much). Anyone who uses Freudian psychoanalysis in their counseling or who makes you feel as if you’re in metaphorical stirrups is obviously to be avoided. How to find a counselor that’s right for you (whether they call themselves counselor, coach, priest, … (preferably not therapist, but that’s my bias))? We’ve now reached the limits of my wisdom.
(And in response to the obvious comment some may make, about how our ancestors somehow muddled through without “professional” counseling: 1. they muddled through without indoor plumbing either 2. they generally lived within a framework that included the older and wiser family members, the village elder, the religious leader, etc. If you have access to these, then by all means, turn to them.)
#39 Tcobb, There is a bit of historic trivia about Martin Luther that is quite apropos here. He was part of the first full generation of young people to grow up with the printing press as an integral part of their lives. Much like the young kids of today that are growing up with the Internet as an integral part of their own lives.
One of many reasons that Martin Luther broke through were so many reformers before him had failed was the free exchange of information that the printing press had brought to the world of that time. But just as important, IMHO, was that his was the first generation to be comfortable operating within and expressing themselves freely in this new world of information exchange that the printing press had created.
Bogie Wheel (106): Excellent comment.
Delia: I work at a hospital known for its’ OB Department and know many OB’s of both sexes. I think most are drawn to the field because they enjoy delivering babies, not because they are secret pervs who get a kick out of humiliating women (there are undoubtably, of course, a few who are.) When you think about it, the maternity ward is the most joyful place in a hospital. Despite the hours and the occasional tragedies, being an OB is certainly more upbeat than, say, being an oncologist.
I was a twin and was born 2 months premature. I weighed 2 pounds, 8 oz at birth. My twin, who was even tinier, died shortly after our birth. I personally am very grateful for the wonders of western medical technology, male-dominated or not (and OB/GYN’s are increasingly female these days). If my own mother had elected to have a home birth with a midwife in attendance, I doubt I would have lived. She might not have pulled through either; she had a hard time of it. (A healthy woman with a low-risk, non-multiple birth pregnancy is in a different position. Still, visit an old cemetery on the East Coast and you’ll be astounded by the number of graves filled by young women, many buried with their babies. For most of human history, giving birth was a very risky business. That it is now almost routine is a testament to the amazing advances made by the “male dominated” health care profession.)
Nobody enjoys getting a pap smear, but well, it’s just one of the unpleasantries of life women have to put up with, just as going through a colonoscopy is on nobody’s list of favorite activities. I don’t think anybody is out to “humiliate” you when they ask you to put your feet in the stirrups, or have you drink the sludge that makes you spend the entire night in the bathroom before a colonoscopy. How else are they going to examine you or clean you out?
In some Muslim countries, I have read that women will not permit male doctors to examine them. Instead they point at a diagram or a doll and the doctor has to guess what’s wrong. I’ll take the stirrups.
Yeah, anatomically, women carry a heavier burden then men do because of our reproductive system. No use complaining about it (although we all do, don’t we?:-) I don’t know that’s it’s always a great deal having your “junk” on the outside though. Just this afternoon I saw a boy who was playing soccer get kneed in the groin. The poor kid collapsed into a ball and then vomited. I felt very bad for him, although I can only sympathize, not empathize.
134. Donna V.,
And, whilst I’m HAPPY as a hypoglycemic-clown in a frosting factory for your outcome, women like me with LONG labors (I went 2 days) would have been unceremoniously cut open like a fish for a c-section.
And there are wayyyyyy more stories of women having unnecessary c-sections than not.
Unnecessary biopsies are next. You think taking biopsies of healthy women is OK? REALLY?
Oh, darlin’…you need a dose of DELIA in the worst way!
Delia: You think taking biopsies of healthy women is OK? REALLY?
I re-read Donna’s post… even between lines. Dumbfounded am I.
Thus spake Delia some more: Oh, darlin’…you need a dose of DELIA in the worst way!
Please, no cat fights!
136. twobyfour,
Cat fight shmat fight. I adore Donna V. We just happen to disagree on this subject. Donna was standing up for the Nazi doctors because she was saved by one and therefore thinks all Nazi doctors are good doctors. It’s tricky
Stop fantasizing over a jello wrestling match where there is none. ;p
Delia, I have seen a doctor during the past 20 years 3 times at best (I don’t count almost a forced visit after my person-to-car collision, I bravely resisted to the emergency medic until I almost passed out and that was when the evil transpired… when she used my moment of weakness against me and kidnapped me to the nearest ER).
That being said, I am studying ditch medicine (self-study). Beside other stuff. I guess I am ready to join the ranks of the Nazi docs. But I have a feeling that there may be occasions where saving a life takes a precedence over ideology.
Musical interlude…a dose of Delia
138. twobyfour,
Most of the Nazi Docs/Dents I experienced in my youth. Doctors of the lower caliber took medical coupons and often over-diagnosed poor children from the welfare-state (this, unfortunately I agree with stinky B.O. on some levels).
Every male doctor I’ve encountered for anything from a simple knee injury to a dangerous anaphylaxis type allergic reaction to a breast lump did and said things to me that were sexualized and rude in nature (from one doc feeling almost up to my groin for a knee injury and then pointedly asking me when I had my last pap smear with a twinkle in his eye to one doctor feeling my breasts for lumps and then asking me if my breasts are the horrific result of breast-feeding because his wife was pregnant at the time and he didn’t want his precious wife’s tit’s to turn out like mine god-forbid from breast-feeding).
Then, we had the dentist who promoted ‘giving up your vacation for your dental work’. This asshole insisted I get a gold tooth. I went through over 10 nazi dentists before I found a decent guy. Guess what? He died of cancer a few years ago. The ONLY guy I ever trusted in one of my orifices and he’s GONE. The moronic women-tards who took over his practice when he died are a joke. They are kind, compassionate and good people but they HAVE NO CLUE with regards to the true artistry and skill of dentistry.
139. rickl,
Never give out a dosage of Delia without the antidote. Now, what is the antidote? Not a red or blue pill, I promise you.
Delia
try to make a novel from your life, ie ala Faulkner, might help you to find resilience, though that implies that you keep all your energy for this work otherwise you will end like a boring stepmother whose children prefer to stay away
@whiskey,
Well, the first step, of marginalizing betas and elevating alphas, is already well under way in Singapore.
I know quite a number of guys who are decent in all aspects (classic betas), but just can’t get a girl, and seeing them (myself included) get shot down again and again hurts a lot.
The older females in the office (the married, stable ones from a different age) keep telling us to keep our spirits up, that’s it’s not us at wrong for not being smart/rich/handsome enough, and that they just can’t understand the younger women. The concept of ‘settling’ no longer exists.
As to whether it will lead to a more PC regime… I think it’s a high likelihood, but not a certainty.
@21 Marty “Children. Think of them as very smart middle-schoolers in terms of emotional development, wisdom, understanding of life’s limits, tragedies and history. Smart, sheltered 11-year olds.”
Maybe so, but I tend to think they’re filthy liars.
The Wobbly Guy/142
PC in Singapore, serious doubt. PC is a leftist concept. The Singaporean government is a bit authocratic, but leftist, unlikely.
The problem in Singapore has prolly a different basis, though there may be some commonalities with what is happening in the West.
Certainly the “betas” are not “white males”. The Malay and Chinese elements do have a preference for males, traditionally, and it is possible that may be reflected in a relative scarcity of females, which then can afford to be picky. They are after Prince Charming, filthy rich, yet sensitive and faithful. Dream on, grrlz!
Of course, the affluence and and career development takes a precedence. And it takes time. and then, the young lady is not so young anymore, she is now 39 and her friend a while back snatched that Prince Charming as she was prettier and now our “young” lady settled for a regular Joe. Problem is, she can’t conceive. After 5 years of trying, her hubby is very disappointed and divorces her when he finds a younger female, maybe not as pretty, but fertile.
She takes her gripes to her mother. “Why didn’t you tell me, mom? Maybe if I did not wait that long, it may have been possible to correct my problem, maybe it was not even there in the first place. I have a career, but there is no joy in it.”
“I did tell you. Many times I tried. But I was so 20th century and you were so smart. You weren’t simply listening. At all.”
Well… but maybe that is not in cards. Once the economies collapse, she may not have a career. And then the war. Many men went and never came back. And those that remained… she is pretty, but not that pretty. All her dates… she ended up with nothing. Self-centered and cold, they say she is. They are so unfair! She is very smart!
***
I am not sure where the problem is. It would be tempting to conclude that the economic freedom and a freedom of choices with no attached responsibility may have been the primary component. It is probably not that simple.
But what I am almost sure of, this problem will self-correct in one or two generations. There will be a lot of “smart” people not leaving any genetic trace.
Whiskey’s comment at #45 wasn’t a prediction. Rather it was a description of past events and reaction to them in big cities of the USA like LA SF & NYC.
Recommended to the readers of BC. I have long considered T.C. Boyle a gifted writer, and from this, I believe he “gets it”. I think this has been published by the editors of The Atlantic precisely because they do not.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2010/08/the-silence/8040
mezzrow @146:
Groovy man! That Atlantic article was way out there. It was so much more interesting to dwell upon wantabe Buddhist monks in Arizona!!! You’ve got to be kidding, and reading it was so much more useful than dwelling on the impending catastrophic collapse of western civilization, and trying to figure out how to help fight against its destruction, or at least mitigate the effects upon my family as much as possible.
An article about otherwise intelligent people with far to much time and money, and obviously little common sense sequestering themselves away in the desert instead of trying to do something useful for their society.
What a bunch of self centered, arrogant sh!ts… In a new age, politically correct, Vegan kind of way!
LOL!
I hope they get a life, or better yet, life gets them! If you subscribe to similar eastern mumbo jumbo, to the point of withdrawing from society, I hope life gets you too, but if that were the case, you wouldn’t be reading and commenting on Wretchard’s 21st century society of correspondence, the Belmont Club.
this thread is starting to sound like Saturday Night Live Roseanne Rosannadanna on smoking and sweat or Commencement — Columbia School of Journalism
Rex @ 147
Exactly. This is what these unserious people do while the world burns down.
The Atlantic editors see this as art. I think Boyle wrote it as a warning and a metaphor of what we see from similar elites in their pink prayer shawls and blue pashmina meditation skirts. This way leads to death. These would be the acolytes of the lightworker and those who are currently in the driver’s seat. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. You and me and Papa Ray will be OK, but these feckless ba****ds are really going to get us killed if we don’t watch out. Or we can stay silent.
Gilda Quotes
“If humor was the foundation of my life, men were definitely the first floor”
-Gilda Radner
“Fame changes a lot of things, but it can’t change a light bulb”
-Gilda Radner
“Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end.”
-Gilda Radner
“Doctors are whippersnappers in ironed white coats
who spy up your rectums and look down your throats
And press you and poke you with sterilized tools
And stab at solutions that pacify fools.
I used to revere them and do what they said
Till I learned what they learned on was already dead.”
-poem by Gilda Radner