House of Eratosthenes

Over the last twenty years or so I’ve observed much and taken copious notes on narratives. Their importance continues to emerge, and surprise me, for I keep underestimating this. I think it not an exaggeration to say people are narratives, and narratives are people. Whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, if you meet someone for the first time and are compelled by business or romantic ambitions to ensure things work out well, in order to get to know them, you figure out the narrative that drives them. It’s like a pulse. Everybody has one.

Some people can’t be around each other, even for a temporary term of time. That’s because they’re devoted to narratives that conflict. The narratives being incompatible, for the two to co-exist, one will have to give up the narrative so the other can keep theirs, and when neither one is willing to do this, that’s when people are incompatible. When their narratives are incompatible.

I noticed earlier that a narrative is a blend of the proven and unproven, of the true and not-so-true. But there has to be at least some truth. This is their seductive power. You don’t know for sure it’s a lie, and you don’t know for sure what parts of it are true; but there has to be at least something. If there wasn’t some truth to it, it wouldn’t come to be. On the other hand, as I mentioned, if it’s all the way true and all the way proven, it ceases to be a narrative. So there’s got to be something missing.

Does that mean a part of it has to be false?

I think the answer to that has to do with whether you perceive reality in the instant, or across an expanse of time — the static versus the dynamic. That’s a mouthful. I’ll explain.

The dictionary tells us a narrative is a story. It doesn’t go so far as to say it’s a synonym, but it comes close. Some dictionaries say the narrative has a point to it, and it’s presented in story form. This is one of those cases where the dictionary doesn’t work for us. It’s wrong.

Because the dictionary — correct this time — tells us a story is a sequence of events. An event is a meaningful occurrence, meaningful in the sense that the situation is changed. Imagine yourself writing a story. Hero walks into the room. Is that an event? No, not really. Now the hero is ambushed and taken captive. That’s an event. Prior to it, there was a situation in which the hero was free; subsequent to that, he is not. That makes it an event. Stories have to have events. If they don’t have events, they’re not stories.

A narrative is not a story, because if it has any events at all, they are antecedent. There is a narrative that we stole the land from the Indians. That’s an antecedent event. But we only care about the situation subsequent to that, which does not change. Narratives are mono-situational.

And this is where they fall apart.

There is a narrative that says women have been unfairly subjugated by men, and are now achieving equality. Have they done it yet? Are they going to be doing it a little bit off in the future? Maybe way off in the future? Back in 1974? In 1965? The narrative is fragile because if one of those answers is the right one, all the others must not be.

Narratives in general are not to be trusted because they’re static, while life is dynamic. Real life is a story, fully qualified as a story, with situation-changing events. Things are significantly different in the running-up to the event, than they are in the aftermath. We are dynamic people living dynamic existences in a dynamic universe. And that’s where narratives depart from reality.

“We’re prisoners today, but tomorrow we’re going to win our freedom.” That’s popular as a general form, but if it’s really true then there’s a win-the-freedom event, after which come some responsibilities. And you’ll notice, if you watch closely, very rarely do people accept those responsibilities. In the aftermath of Yorktown in 1781, they did. And they went on to settle other questions, Constitution, Great Compromise, Judiciary Act, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, all that good stuff. It was a right-wing, not a left-wing, revolution; had the balls to admit it had won.

The way things play out far more often, is that the revolutionaries — left-wing — continue to cling to the narrative. They refuse to accept the responsibilities that would materialize in the aftermath of the event. Haven’t got the balls to admit they won. And so we all find ourselves in these absurd situations, where some oppressed group is supposed to continue to win new rights it’s supposed to have won already.

It’s a static narrative measuring dynamic things.

A dead narrative assessing the situation of living people.

The truth is that activists love this weakness of narratives. It assures they’ll never have to give up the power that was entrusted to them. We’re winning the new freedoms…still winning ’em…winning ’em some more. The years come and go.

And the situation does not change, because it’s a situation sealed up inside a dead narrative, like a dead insect pinned to a wall in a collection. The situation remains, for anyone who asks about it, endlessly, C.A.L.W.W.N.T.Y. — “Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet.”

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LGBTQWERTYUIOP+ Friendly
Saturday, May 31st, 2025

“Pride Month” is starting in less than two hours now.

I’ve been mulling something over, and I think I’ve hit on the most ridiculous idea. I mean, out of all of them. It may not be the most out-and-out risible idea but it’s the most deceptive, and probably the most damaging, out of all the ideas in current circulation.

Burdening a true believer in this idea with a few laps around the track of the “Explain it to me like I’m five” game, can be a source of amusement. You have to laugh because if you don’t, you’ll cry.

Explain…like I’m five…the “LGBTQ+ Friendly” badge festooned upon some businesses in Google Maps.

Queer friendly businesses, as a concept, presuppose the existence of queer-hostile businesses. This is where the damage is done. The existence of this mechanism both relies on, and promulgates, a narrative that LGBTQ hostility must exist substantially in both businesses and in their clientele. Notice that no one anywhere is taking on the responsibility of actually saying so.

The entire thing takes advantage of people’s good nature, while at the same time exploiting hasty, low quality thinking: If I don’t have any first hand knowledge about LGBTQ+ people or their plights, going by this as a clue, I would have to presume they’re in a lot of trouble. Needing a special icon so you know what businesses you can patronize, without getting beaten or otherwise abused? How awful.

But meanwhile, every business I can recall ever having patronized — all of them, throughout my entire time on the planet — operated, and if they’re still in operation still operate, on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Does someone somewhere have a different experience? You walk into a bar and the bouncer pointedly inquires “Y’all ain’t one of them homersexuals, are ya?” and makes life tough for you if you can’t answer no. Where has that ever happened?

It’s divisive. For no good reason. There’s no necessity for this.

It just helps people act like victims. Helps them think of themselves as victims.

But we put up with it. Doesn’t affect us in any way, right? Just “tolerate” it.

But then we have to wonder why we’re all so divided.

Well, it’s because of gimmicks like this.

Entirely unnecessary ones.

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The Nerd Takes a Bow and Makes an Exit
Saturday, May 31st, 2025

Press conference for Elon Musk’s last day:

Many exciting things happened this month, but this is probably the most significant one.

Although it changes little. But there’s so much happening here.

Elon Musk — and by extension, DOGE, and President Trump as well — has been at the receiving end of a great deal of criticism, not all of it crystal clear or earnest. We should expect “big government” types, some of whom identify as big-government types and are proud to do so, to come up with some arguments against shrinkage of the government. But how is anyone opposed to eliminating waste? That’s the key question.

If you’re a big-government type, or if you’re neutral on where the size of government should go but you have some favorite pet program; you might come up with an argument against a specific action to cut the program, or to gut the program. But if Elon Musk and crew find out about Social Security checks going out to dead people, you should be all in favor of reclaiming that money. Right? If your own program is so important, you shouldn’t be wanting another program stealing money from it. Government can only spend so much.

It’s surprising how many loud people don’t seem to understand this.

But behind all this criticism against Musk and DOGE, which comes off looking like a critique against the second-wife’s evening dress coming from the first wife…it seems like there is something else.

These claims that Musk is “not a scientist, not an engineer…[just] a billionaire con man with a lot of money” ignore his many achievements, which have not been low-key by any stretch of the imagination. The intended audience for such remarks would seem to be people who are unaware of what he’s been doing, and those people would have had to have been living under rocks for the last ten years or more.

He lands rockets. Lands them. NASA has been launching rockets for years and decades, but landing a rocket on a target the size of a pie plate is a different thing entirely. And to ignore or to criticize such an achievement, with the criticism coming from someone who can’t even parallel park, is in bad form.

I think what really changed yesterday — culturally — was the nerd earning genuine respect, legitimately, from President Trump who is the guy on top of it all, the seat at the apex of the power pyramid. Our sense of normal for nerds, as I’ve noticed many times before, is very far removed from that. The way we’re used to doing it, the nerd may achieve a grudging acknowledgment that he’s capable of doing something the rest of the team needs to have done, and there’s no one else who can do it. And that’s the best a nerd gets. Like, ever.

You see it in our police procedural programs fairly constantly; it isn’t even worth the trouble to go out gathering links to provide examples. Just about every single episode of every single show has this scene. The nerd starts to explain what “ambient data” is, or how a key logger works, etc. Someone much cooler than the nerd lets him get five to ten words into it, then interjects to remind the nerd to speak in English. Then the nerd starts over again. It only burns off five or ten seconds or so, but ten seconds is ten seconds. They keep doing this. it’s become all but mandatory. Why?

To remind people: This nerd can do something you can’t do, in fact it’s something you need to have done, but never, ever forget, your objects of veneration are elsewhere. Not him. Those other guys. The ones who can high-kick and crack safes and hot-wire jeeps…but don’t know computers. Don’t learn the computers, kids. Learn the video games.

As one dating-age nymph commented in a thread I remember seeing some twenty years ago: “Everything worth inventing has been invented already. Learn to rap and do your crunches.”

This is cultural. Don’t be the nerd. That’s the social milieu to which we have become accustomed, and we’ve been getting accustomed to it for a long time.

“Fact checks” abound claiming Elon and his team haven’t actually found anything. It’s too bad we’re now living in the post-credibility age of the fact check, and everyone paying attention has figured out fact checks are just feelings-checks. From where come these feelings?

Part of it is the mission of DOGE. People don’t want elimination or reduction of fraud or inefficiency. There’s a distinct “Not anti-war, just fighting for the other side” flavor to this: People want the fraud to continue because they’re benefiting from it.

But also: To watch the nerd sail off into the sunset, with his significant contributions acknowledged by the guy on the top of it all. Gratitude expressed, earnestly, meaningfully, and with merit. To actually focus on the idea that the nerd got something done we needed done. He actually traced the carpet fibers on the dead body to where the murder took place, or decrypted the drug sale inventory, guessed the password, etc. He actually did that and it was pretty cool.

People aren’t accustomed to that. It’s more than they can handle.

To me, this is what Making America Great Again — is. It’s a renewal of focus on the objective of actually getting something done, of achieving the mission, in whole or in part. We have been needing that, for awhile. We’ve gone too long allowing the nerds to be upstaged by these hot sexy men and women who swing their big hair around and get in arguments about nothing, between the action scenes of karate-chopping bad guys. It hasn’t worked out well for us. It’s translated, by and large, into potentially talented, capable people doing next to nothing, because in real life there aren’t that many occasions to hot-wire jeeps, stow away on helicopters or karate-chop bad guys.

But we are surrounded by computers and other high tech devices, and someone has to figure out how to make them go. And then there are those rockets.

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Why Liberals Are More Mentally Ill Than Conservatives
Wednesday, April 30th, 2025

John Hawkins, writing at Culturcidal, offers five reasons.

As you’d expect from the people who invented the concept of “microaggressions” and “safe zones,” liberals have a tendency to wildly overreact to things most people would barely notice. They also tend to spend their lives terrified of imagined dooms that never happen…Really, it’s no surprise so many liberals mentally break when they spend their days endlessly being spoon-fed imaginary apocalyptic scenarios…

I have noticed, in my dealings with dedicated liberals outside of politics, there’s often this tension arising where I’m waiting on them to make a delivery of some kind. And rather than the product or service, what I see them bringing is drama. It gets to the point where I start wondering what the drama is going to be, and stop wondering if I’m going to get what I contracted to have delivered. The initiative is lacking, and they seem to be drawn to distractions like a moth to a flame.

These “apocalyptic scenarios” seem, to me, to be conjured up for exactly that purpose: To distract from an ordinary, humdrum delivery. It’s like they can’t accept that life, for today, this block of hours, is all about fulfilling the expectations of another. That would be a boring existence. But if they’re among the final “survivors” who get to watch the mushroom clouds right before everything is consigned to oblivion, that would make them much more important.

I saw it during the 1980’s when Reagan was going to blow up the world. That would have made Reagan a very bad man, a fun thought for them to have. But even more fun was the idea of their own significance. That they’d hang around to sing Amen. The final extinction of the human race, after these hundreds of thousands of years…and they’d be in the middle of it. Burned a crisp, but at least, here to see it happen.

They didn’t say so outright. But it was plain to see they were unprepared for the alternative: Life will go on, tomorrow is just as important as today, and there are many tomorrows ahead of you…and in each one, someone is expecting something out of you that you have to fulfill. Something mundane.

The work they put into avoiding that mindset — it’s off the charts. Looks like a phobia to me.

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Maybe Now We Can Abandon This Nonsense About “Mansplaining”
Wednesday, April 30th, 2025

The report is in on the cause of that deadly helicopter crash over the Potomac.

“Not only was the Black Hawk flying too high, but in the final seconds before the crash, its pilot failed to heed a directive from her co-pilot, an Army flight instructor, to change course”…The report further blames the air traffic controller for lacking both clarity and urgency in its communication with the chopper.

Captain Rebecca Lobach failed to follow her co-pilot and instructor Andrew Eaves’s order to turn left in a bid to avoid the descending aircraft, ignoring his instructions just 15 seconds before the crash.

Just ignored? For fifteen seconds, before it’s lights-out for everybody. Yeah, I wasn’t there, but sometimes speculation is safe. That’s a snub.

Our social reformers who want to regulate everything, and invariably get their way, remaining everlastingly unhappy with results even as everyone bends over backwards to do what they want — introduced quite awhile ago a new sense of normalcy: No “mansplaining.” If you need a man to tell you about it, it must not be worth knowing.

Somehow, we just accept this. Well, how acceptable would it be if it were a petulant middle-finger against “blacksplaining” or “gaysplaining.” That’s exactly how prejudiced is this recent campaign against mansplaining. And, it turns out, every now and then, the men do know something.

Now we have dozens of people dead. Completely avoidable — at the time. But no longer.

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The Tariff Thing
Wednesday, April 30th, 2025

So right now, the huge back-and-forth argument taking place is whether the whole tariff thing is worth the present-term unpleasantness.

There are two arguments against: 1) There is no gain for the pain. The investor uncertainty that plagues us today is going to stay with us for the foreseeable future, and there is no benefit over the horizon offsetting it. Or 2) This is America, and we do not fix problems when the fix involves short-term unpleasantness. We only fix the fun problems.

If there’s truth to 1), then somebody had better get to work finding an alternative solution. President Trump’s antagonists may have not been paying attention, but he did an excellent job summarizing the post-WWII history, Bretton Woods, gold standard, etc. and how it leads to the current situation. It isn’t sustainable. We have to do something to fix this. Trump’s critics have had a lot to say about a lot of things, but I haven’t seen any of them propose an alternative. Closest I’ve seen is that some of them will deny there is a problem.

If 2)…we may as well just close up shop right now. What country, or company, or family empire, or organization of any kind, survives for any length of time only working on the fun problems?

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About That Signal Story
Monday, March 31st, 2025

I haven’t blogged much at all, because everything worth talking about has something to do with Trump. And the whole Trump thing is in that uncomfortable part — where I’m no longer in the minority. That part where the thing I want done, got done, and people are in the process of seeing it was the right thing to do all along. That Biden really was senile the whole time, he wasn’t running anything, and whoever was making the decisions was making them contrary to the interests of the country. That firing Trump was a mistake from the beginning. And the legitimate electorate might not have ever done that anyway, that the 2020 election was indeed rigged.

What more is there to say?

But this Signal thing. There is one thing worth pointing out about it. And I’m still not the first to notice it, but it’s worth talking about it a bit more:

Democrats were quick to seize on the Signal story as a case of Trump officials poorly handling classified information and as an excuse to call for terminations. But DNI Tulsi Gabbard quickly poured cold water on the notion that this unforced error was some major national security scandal.

“The conversation was candid and sensitive, but as the President, National Security Advisor stated, no classified information was shared,” she explained. “There were no sources, methods, locations, or war plans that were shared. This was a standard update to the National Security Cabinet that was provided alongside updates that were given to foreign partners in the region.”

Sure enough, the new texts revealed from The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg went on to prove that. Remember, he claimed he originally didn’t want to publish them because “the information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility.”

Only that didn’t end up being the case.

“The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans,'” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded on X. “This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”

Vice President JD Vance went on to note “It’s very clear Goldberg oversold what he had.”

With these developments, it’s no surprise how Democrats are changing the narrative.

Top secret war plans — to classified information. To, sensitive. Now it’s sensitive information.

I part company with those who are stridently defending the administration, in the sense that sensitive information is still sensitive. In fact the adjective is typically used to discuss information that isn’t classified, but isn’t a free-for-all either. You shouldn’t let it go just any ol’ place. It’s the term that should have been used from the very beginning.

And I’d still like to know what’s going on here, why Goldberg’s name got added in the first place. That doesn’t necessarily mean the administration botched it. But it does suggest someone is still friendly with someone else, who shouldn’t be. The swamp still has some swamp water left in it.

I used the analogy on social media — Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby Doo using end-to-end encryption to discuss how they’re going to trap the monster. Monster contributes to the discussion: What the hell are you meddling kids talking about here? And zoiks. How did that happen? Someone forgot to uncheck the little box by the monster’s name?

See…that doesn’t cut it. The question remains. How did the monster’s contact info get added? What’s he doing in there? To me, and many millions of others, the whole drama is Trump draining the swamp. See, we don’t trust the swamp. We don’t trust these little “Rolodex” connections, this web of strands connecting this person to that person. Someone was friendly with the monster, Mr. Goldberg. Best case scenario is, for convenience sake, someone borrowed someone else’s contact file and there was benign intent all around. Even with that, there’s still something worth investigating here.

It’s too bad our media sucks so much. All we get to hear about are a bunch of zany theories about Trump being unfit because Trump did this or Trump did that. But there’s another layer here.

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That Guy Shouldn’t Be Deciding Stuff
Sunday, February 23rd, 2025

For many years I have noticed that people lose their ability to discuss issues with clarity and focus as their quality of life improves. When you’re hungry, you’re not going to lose sight of your goal. If you can’t breathe, literally nothing else matters. With your purse and your pantry packed full, you start getting distracted by all sorts of dumb sketchy stuff. What makes it so? And are people aware? If their behavior changes, they must be.

But the people who are so privileged by present circumstances that they lose their direction, seem to lose awareness as well. You can just listen to them. They really think they have it so tough.

Now that Elon Musk is asking the federal “workers” to list five accomplishments they made for the week just ended, I’m seeing all sorts of blowback against this about this rich guy somehow in this position to pass judgment on what the ordinary people are doing. With some ricochets from those of us who’ve had to fill out such reports for years, and never questioned the necessity. And you know, suddenly, the thought occurs to me:

“So-and-so shouldn’t have an opinion.”

For the last several years I’ve been hearing an awful lot of supposedly strong arguments, built around that weak core framework. No uterus, no opinion on abortion! Trump shouldn’t ever be in a high political office again! If you’re white, sit down, shut up and listen! Etc. etc. etc…it’s fake and phony because, if such people who aren’t supposed to have opinions happen to have the “right” ones, you know the muzzle-obsessed person who wants them defrocked of any influence, suddenly will swivel 180 degrees on that. Oh that’s the right opinion. Everybody listen to this guy.

Also, we’ve been asked to consent — and apparently already given our consent — to living in a world of bureaucrats. This-or-that open question, the resolution of which will impact people’s lives irreversibly forever, will be decided by such-and-such a commission populated by strangers whose names you aren’t allowed to know, whom you’ll never meet. And their decision is final, there is no appeal. We keep running into that, over and over again, and have accepted that as normal. So against that backdrop, getting all particular about who can & can’t have an opinion seems a bit odd.

But back to my sudden thought. If we’re so privileged we’re unaware of our privilege, and we’re lacking a an altimeter, flying blind, with little instrumentation to reliably assess that we’re hovering so high that we can no longer focus on what’s important — wouldn’t this be a good tip-off? If you’re wondering where your next meal is coming from, you’re not going to be too concerned about who’s got an opinion about it or who’s allowed to pontificate about it. “So and so shouldn’t be in a position to say” is something you’re only going to hear from spoiled people. Spoiled, sight-impaired, tin-eared people.

Because the truth is, just about everyone has opinions. You can shame them into silence, but they’re still going to have the opinion. What, you thought because you couldn’t hear the opinion, the opinion simply went away? Or the person holding the opinion just evaporated into thin air? You’re even more spoiled than I thought.

Our concern should be about whether the opinions are correct.

So Elon Musk is going to scour over these five bullet points about what “you” managed to get done this week. Him, or some delegate of his. And form an opinion about whether you’re worth your weight…which may go one way, or the other way, and it may be right or wrong. He might screw it up and fire you even though you’re a vital cog in the machine. That’s the fear. But the fear-mongering isn’t about that. It’s that Elon shouldn’t be deciding this.

And that denunciation, in turn, doesn’t offer anything by way of a substitute person to decide this instead of Elon. There should be no decider. This is why I see it as a first world thing. “Nobody should have an opinion about the blah blah blah” — means — I have a cushy lifestyle, or lack of accountability, built around the blah. I have people slaving away for my benefit when I’m not doing anything to earn it…and it depends on blah. Or I’m doing things I know are wrong, and I get away with it…because of blah. The blah blah blah is the bough over my cradle, and I’m the baby, so I don’t want anyone screwing with that. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE AN OPINION.

Without “civilization” having advanced to the point of decline, and the spoiling effect it has; the lion chasing the gazelle, who will starve to death if the chase doesn’t end in his favor, doesn’t care who has an opinion about it. The gazelle, running for its life, isn’t too spun up about such things either. The farmer who has to get the work done, cares only about whether all the hay bales can be loaded into the truck in so-many-minutes so he can get on with the rest of his list. He’s not going to care who has an opinion about it.

Things like this matter. They limit the advance of civilization. If civilization can advance, but in so doing inspire the rise of these phony arguments, then the advancement of civilization is limited. Just like the speed of a rocket car is limited by the inertia and the headwind pounding on the nose cone, as the greater speeds are achieved. That’s us, we’re the car. Or, our civilization is the car. Our government, for the time being. If we want to go any faster, maybe the time has come to stop working on a hotter and mightier rocket engine, and take a look at the aerodynamics involved.

The concern is that our government has become a jobs program. Elon Musk is behaving as if it is one. The rebuttal is “Elon shouldn’t have an opinion about that,” and that’s a very silly, very counterproductive rebuttal. It protests too much, suggesting that all or most of the angst and vituperation against Mr. Musk’s efforts, are inspired by a situation which finds him correct. And his efforts overdue.

They’re arguing against him, the way people argue when they’re fat, dizzy and disoriented, inebriated from the elixir of long-standing affluence. The way people argue when they haven’t been wondering where their next meal is coming from, for a very long time. If they’re so sure Elon Musk is in the wrong, they need to figure out how to argue like a starving lion. Focus more on where the meat is. Not leave it up to the richest man in the world to ponder such things.

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Our National Conversation
Tuesday, January 28th, 2025

So, we did it. We elected Donald Trump to a second term. A second, non-consecutive term, which makes him the first President since 1892, and only the second one in our nation’s entire history, to be re-elected in such a way. I saw someone somewhere talk it up as “The Greatest Political Comeback in All of Human History” or some such thing…it probably is that, without exaggeration. Matter of opinion, I suppose.

Descriptions of the first week have settled into a comfort-zone of most frequently used adjectives, nouns and metaphors, like “whirlwind,” “sweeping,” “pushing the envelope,” et al. Killing off Diversity Equity and Inclusion, or DEI; launching the opening salvo in what is sure to be a protracted legal battle over “birthright citizenship”; declassification of the JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King assassination files; many others.

From his detractors, surprisingly — total silence. Maybe I should call that “near total,” since there is no such thing as total silence in our national discourse. Starting sometime in the weekend just past, during which this incoming administration was around five or six days old, there began to emerge a leitmotif of steadying complaint which consisted of:

1. If you’re a man, women aren’t going to have sex with you because you supported Trump;
2. Elon Musk made a gesture during the inaugural festivities that resemble(s/d) a Nazi salute;
3. Okay so now he’s President, and these egg prices you were complaining about, haven’t gone down.

That’s listed in roughly the order of frequency in which I’ve been hearing these. I don’t know if I’m “hooked in” in my reading sources, or in my contact with social media, to glean a perfect reading of it. Is there such a thing? Probably not. I can only assume my reading of it is satisfactory, and to be that, it has to compare with the typical reading of others who’ve tried to similarly assess. It probably fulfills at least that much. All I can do is assume.

I see the word “incel” has emerged as a synonym, and not entirely appropriately or accurately, for one who supports President Trump and his reforms. It’s supposed to mean involuntarily celibate, as in, a heterosexual man who can’t get any action with the women. Conflating this with Trump support, to those who can think through such matters with discipline, would suggest Trump opposition is on balance insincere, merely a first step toward “success” with dipping the wick. That strikes me as rather sexist; women are just Trump-hating whores, ready to provide the wetness and the 98.6°F for the lads who sound off or vote the right way?

When a woman uses this word to describe Trump supporters, she presupposes all other women are going to apply the same filter. And, one must anticipate, provide the same conditional reward. I’ve noticed, since my first wife’s final round of good-byes, that this presumption of “All women are going to behave and prefer the way I behave and prefer” is the signature of the woman who allows her mouth to out-perform her brain: “No woman will ever blah blah blah.” Women should be the first to understand women are unique. They decide on an individual level. We think, anyway (occasionally we men have our doubts).

Now. When a man conflates “incel” with Trump support…it’s even worse!

1. I forbid any woman from having relations with you, ’cause you’re orange
2. They’re all going to do as I say!
3. That makes you incel

Not only is such a man stupid, but sexist as well. Stupid and sexist in such a way, as to suggest his lifetime contact with the opposite sex is sparse and unedifying. He acts like what he calls others.

The “I” word, over time up to now, but especially now — has been worn out to the point of uselessness, and rather thoroughly.

Regarding the Musk thing, what strikes me about it is that the comparison is far more convincing in still photos, than in motion pictures, in which Elon’s gesture can be clearly seen as one of “From my heart, to all of yours” or something. Moving film footage exists of Der Fuhrer making his own Nazi salute, and…it’s not close. Not even convincing. Still photos are another matter, but we’re not living in the age of still photos, are we?

As far as the egg prices, well…I guess we’re all going to have to hunker down and see how this plays out over time. If opposition to Trump has centered itself around “Egg Whataboutism,” it has done so only with limited enthusiasm for this new rhetorical tactic, and with limited credibility and limited success. As of this writing, the administration is early into its eighth day. Any shopper who’s sufficiently savvy to see what’s happened to egg prices during the Biden regime, will probably figure out it takes longer than that to bring the prices back down to sane levels again.

Bottom line to all of it though, is this: The first week of Trump 2.0 is arguably history-making, in terms of the wave-making and the frenzy of activity. If I were in the business of conjuring up opposition to Trump just for the sake of conjuring up opposition to Trump, and it’s clear many are engaged in just such an endeavor, for exactly that purpose, nothing more — and I managed to come up with these three arguments? I’d hang my head in shame. Back to the drawing board. An obvious decision.

Find some other complaints that might resonate. Come on, there have to be some. There’s been so much activity, this is the best I can do? Looks like Nazi salute in still photos, eggs still cost, and won’t-screw-you? And then the barrel is empty and we’re scraping the bottom. That’s just stunning.

This End-DEI thing alone, all by itself; that’s thousands of jobs. Dumb stupid jobs, and maybe if the stupidity of the job surpasses the stupidity of the person holding it, bushels of wasted talent. But with all those jobs coming to a certain end, you’d think the resulting resentment would give rise to something better than Nazis, eggs and friend-zone.

But it’s clear that at this point, that’s all they have.

Whatever happened to life on Earth being in danger because of our gas-powered cars?

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My New Year’s Resolutions Are For Other People
Wednesday, January 1st, 2025

My New Year’s resolutions are for others. Yeah, sue me.

If you so much as breathe the oxygen from a limousine or a Gulfstream jet, stick a cork in it about “carbon emissions” or “climate change.”

Don’t scold or browbeat boys or men. Relate to our hopes, fears, ambitions, dreams, the same way you’d do it with a girl or a woman. If boy has ideas, encourage him “to be the leader he can become someday” the same way you’d do with a girl. If he interrupts someone, by all means call on him to calm down a bit and wait his turn…but do the same with girls. Don’t make him feel bad just for being male. Don’t medicate him for acting too much like a boy. Don’t make him stand behind some line because it’s “girls’ turn” to succeed or be awesome. If a female really is ready to be awesome, she doesn’t require this special treatment. If handicapping the boys could lead to something good, it would’ve happened by now. Tearing down the boys doesn’t uplift the girls. Making girls afraid of boys doesn’t help them lead more fulfilling lives. Lift them both up and let them both become the best they can be.

Married women who are unhappy — go to bed. Try again the next day. Marriage involves commitment. If you have a friend who’s an unhappily married woman and “needs” to be talked into getting a divorce, don’t. You’re wrong, probably. None of your business. If there are kids involved, think of them first.

Children successfully raised by single moms — congratulations on having defied the odds. But the odds stand. You are a happy accident, not an example. Do what you can to make sure there are as few single moms as possible. Shouldn’t be happening.

Impulse control. Take a breather from this “If you can’t handle me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best” stuff. Show how you’re made of sugar, spice and everything nice. Make women look good again.

Boys, now that Boy Scouts has been obliterated by liberal activists, take the initiative and do the things you’d do if you were in it. Learn survival skills. Knot tying. Starting a fire. Sewing, cleaning, darning, cooking, baking…this is not “woman’s work.” You’re a better man if you know how to do these things.

If it’s organized, and it has the effect of lowering the birth rate in the western world…resist. The agenda is real, and exceedingly dangerous. Boys are boys. Girls are girls. If you feel awkward it’s because you’re in a new phase of life, and this one’s a pretty big jump. You aren’t supposed to feel comfortable with it. Talk to the opposite sex.

Discriminating against white people is racism. There’s no such thing as pointing it in the right direction. Knock it off.

Don’t let agenda-driven liberals define good manners. Ever.

Think about your role in life. If it involves someone else doing something to you, get another role. Stop fermenting and gulping from the victim-nectar. Recognize the signs of being drunk on it. Get yourself a new narrative, in which you’re the person doing things, not the person having things done to them. And then make sure these are positive things that help others. Then do them.

Regarding “science.” If you’ve read up on something interesting, be it a theory, established fact, a coterie of “experts” who believe in something they’d like to push. Yes it’s natural you feel like you’re extremely well-informed because you read up on this thing. You feel like an expert yourself. You feel like you’ve managed to get hold of some precious, game-changing nugget of information and you have to do what you can to spread it around.

Understand that this has become the common and accepted way of distributing what we call “misinformation,” that your feelings are likely being manipulated. Also, none of this means the people who disagree with you have never heard of your nugget, or don’t know very much, or are under-educated. Generally, there’s a very high likelihood they’ve come across your nugget already, have checked it out, and come to their own conclusion that it’s b.s. And, that they have good reasons for thinking so. So don’t be an arrogant prick about this. You might be right. They might be right. It could very well be you’re both right. Or both wrong. Learn to discuss things.

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Being Blamed for Things
Friday, December 27th, 2024

Throughout a great variety of misadventures, I have learned the assignment of fault is mankind’s rational thinking at its very lowest. If and when it lands on me, any attempts on my part to appeal for a change of mind, are going to represent the very summit of wasted energy. What’s at stake doesn’t matter. If it’s part of the assemblage of an “anti-Morgan” narrative that’s going to cost me a cool job if it isn’t thwarted; if it’s monumentally unfair, and if facts and logic are on my side; if they want to blame me for the Chicago fire or the sinking of the Titanic; might as well just grin, say thank you for the opportunity, you’re right sir, and be on my way. Time to go.

People who are so obsessed with whose fault it is, are the most intransigent. They’re the first to grab the boss’ ear, because in general that’s where their efforts have been going. And they don’t know anything. They don’t recognize “Wouldn’t-a happened if it weren’t for X doing whatever” is entirely subjective.

In the past few years, I notice my conflicts with very young adults have to do with what I learned since I was their age. This is a generalization, but people in their age group think the assignment of blame is objective. They think there can’t be more than one opinion about that, and if there is such a plurality, that’s bound to be cured by way of some “two go in one comes out” contest that will pare the number down to a proper one. And then everyone involved has to take that seriously.

And in their conflicts with me, it seems they’ve made a goal of paramount importance, out of reaching their coffins without ever having received any of this blame for anything. I’m not sure what happened to make it so. But this “Nothing can be my fault” thing seems to have swelled in importance to overwhelm and engulf all other considerations.

The girls are extremely pushy — even the sensible, conscientious ones — about this question of wearing short skirts to the Sacramento Rotunda at one o’clock in the morning. It’s not that they’re wanting anything bad to happen as a consequence, or are being cavalier about it. Quite to the contrary, their pushiness is about how it shouldn’t happen. It better not! “I should be able to do that.” It’s most disturbing. The conversation ultimately has to end with an implied reassurance that this particular lady, out of the thunderdome of theory and here on the plane of real lived experience, doesn’t seriously plan to do that, thank goodness. But all your warnings about “Honey, no” or “Even scary-looking guys who can defend themselves best be out of there before dark” fall on deaf ears.

They just don’t want anything bad happening, should it happen, to be their fault.

And everything is like that. Again, this is a generalization. There’s a Pareto Principle thing going on: Eighty percent of the consideration of “What might happen? And what can I do to prevent it?” is being exercised by twenty percent of the kids who are capable of exercising it. That’s a fancy way of saying, on average, the kids are mostly or entirely avoiding it. They’d rather just not do things.

They’re turned off to religion, particularly Christianity. What does Christianity say? That there’s already so much that’s your fault, it’s futile to make excuses for it; all you can do is seek redemption you don’t deserve.

I don’t need to go to church.

I don’t need to get a high paying job. That means responsibility. Responsibility opens up a possibility that some event of deficiency or neglect might end up being your fault.

Don’t need to get married or have kids. Being a parent means any one out of lots of things, can and will be your fault.

Don’t need credit cards. Don’t even need a driver’s license. Don’t need, don’t need, don’t need.

I’m not blaming the kids. They didn’t raise themselves. It’s us older people, preparing our eventual replacements, who I can see have committed a major architectural blunder in this society we’ve been molding, shaping, building and nudging through its various evolutionary changes. We’ve produced a society that meets up with every little challenge that emerges, large and small, through the diligence of some decision-making or actor who says, “Better make sure such-and-such happens, or else when the whole thing collapses, someone might think it’s my fault.”

And then we’ve produced a generation that seems to have made a paramount lifetime objective out of “It’s not my fault.” Not by way of making good decisions once they’re in the situation. But by way of entirely avoiding the situation.

We asked for this. At least, our cultural reformers did. Decades and decades and decades of, “We want to change our evolving society, so that such and such a thing is everywhere, free for the asking; or, this other thing over here, will disappear and never be heard from ever again.” And so, rather than arguing for their desired changes rationally, they said “Support our cause or else you’re a bigot.”

And it worked, because too many people said “Well, I certainly don’t want to be a bigot.” In hindsight, we can see even people who agreed with the desired reform, should have insisted on a rational discussion of the pros and cons rather than falling in line, adding their inertia to the growing and accelerating battering ram of reform. But they didn’t so insist. They added to the inertia, and after awhile that became the default modus operandi of getting anything done: Just accuse anyone standing in the way, of…stuff.

Now we have a generation of kids who don’t want to be accused of any stuff.

People my age, particularly the men, can’t talk to them. We grew up watching Captain Kirk respond to some crisis with “Contact Starfleet, and inform them that on my authority, we are crossing into the Neutral Zone.” Or, “Mister Sulu, if you don’t hear from us in ten minutes, proceed to the nearest starbase without us. There won’t be anybody left behind.” Lesson: Take the risks. Absorb the consequences. Get blamed. Those doing the blaming are probably idiots anyway.

And in real life, crossing into adulthood in the age of feminism, we found out this is exactly how it works. Everything is our fault anyway. Might as well make the best decision you can, regardless, with a wink, a nod and a grin. Yes, you’re right; I caused smallpox.

Frankly, I’m worried. We’ve been looking down on bureaucrats who are terrified of doing the right thing, because they might get blamed, and thus stand in the way of what has to be done. But at least our bureaucrats standing in the way of what has to be done, are open to the question of being blamed. At least, by being so clearly terrified of it, they’re demonstrating a capacity to be open to the consideration. They have the stones to, at least, get in the way.

The difference is, an acknowledgment that you are doing something — or, are not doing something. And that this is going to have a direct effect on the outcome.

The kids today who can’t even do that much, have toppled over the precipice into adulthood. In theory, they’re accepting responsibility for making sure things happen. In practice, they’re not. Avoiding it has become a whole way of life for them.

And more are coming.

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Consensus as a Compass
Monday, December 9th, 2024

Abolish Department of Education: Well let’s look at what’s happening here. We have, what, 45 years of data now?

It is baffling to me how quickly Trump stopped being Hitler. An electoral win should not have done that. But it did. What’s happening here? There’s a problem with the way Americans think about things, and the problem predates the creation of DOE. But I still blame the Department for this widespread errant thinking, because the problem has gotten worse, not better, following its creation.

I can’t in good conscience feign ignorance of this problem, or of its effects. I was in it for thirteen years just like everyone else who graduated from public schools.

It’s become a real elephant in the room.

The error is: Consensus as a compass. Figure out where it is. Figure out where it’s going. That way is the “right” way. The other way is fringe-kook. Avoid that. Tens of millions of people have carried this into adulthood, never going against the grain, and when there’s an election they play it like a lottery, picking the winner. They think it’s their job as a voter to predict. This time, they picked Harris, and were momentarily disappointed and fazed when they found out they picked wrong. So they did what you do when you play the wrong numbers in the lottery: They shrugged, and went on with life.

Just a few of the loud ones are clinging to the ambition of making men and women enemies of each other, in the aftermath of being informed men and women don’t want to be enemies. They’ll fail at that but they’ll give it a few more honest tries.

But the point is: The Department of Education has “gifted” us with an entire nation, 370 million strong, of people who can’t distinguish what’s right from whatever a numeric majority says. Far too many people are wholly unprepared for any situation in which those are two different things.

Teacher says: Let’s see a show of hands…and some hands go up, but before they do, heads swivel from one side to the other and back again. Everyone has to know what everyone else is doing. Public school should have taught the kids to simply ATFQ. It taught them the opposite. And it labored long and hard toward doing that: “Right” is what the majority says.

It’s self affirming. Not everybody is deluded in this way, but most of us are, and if most of us think that’s how it works…that’s how it works.

I keep hearing how we need to get rid of bullies.

I’m all in favor of cornering bullies, getting tough with them, or analyzing them, doing what it takes to make them stop being bullies. Bullying is cowardly. Bullying is also painful to the person being bullied. Believe me, I know. But we shouldn’t “end” it because it’s painful to the bullied person. Life is pain. The real problem with bullying is that it’s cowardly. As far as the effect upon the bullied, I have to be honest. Most of what I have to offer as a manly man, today, apart from manly skills, is an elevated pain threshold and I owe that to my bullies. They made me better.

This nonsense about “Let’s see a show of hands” with a subtext of “Prove to me you can noodle out a consensus and then follow it,” on the other hand, confused me for a good long time and toward no good end. It messed me up good. And it isn’t just me.

You didn’t need to read all this to figure out there’s something grossly wrong. The “consensus” droning on and on and on the way it’s been going, for nearly a decade now, about “That guy is basically Hitler,” followed by “But he’s fun to be around and we can work with him” once he’s proven to represent a majority viewpoint; that’s not the way sane or mentally healthy, non-hurting people think or make decisions. It just isn’t. So you know something’s broken. These are just my ideas about what that might be.

I’ve had time to mull this over, so I’m not harboring too much residual question or uncertainty about it. I’m pretty sure.

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Twenty Years Blogging, and I’m Thinking About Work
Tuesday, November 12th, 2024

Twenty years blogging. My thoughts today are about the relationship between blogs, and work. So often, I have missed opportunities to do the first of those two, because the second one got in the way. Gotta keep paying those bills.

Work. Let’s think about that.

A quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson is “I am a great believer in luck, and find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

This is where people get derailed, and start running off down the bunny trail of “Did he really say that?” But I’m more concerned about the spirit behind the letter. Do you get more luck when you do more work?

I have learned, over the last twenty years, about people’s reaction to blogs: They, too have ideas about the relationship between those, and work. There is this unfounded premise that the work a person does, added up to the volume of bloviating they do online, equals k. In other words, it’s a seesaw. People who work, don’t blog, and people who blog, don’t work. It’s quite popular. So popular, in fact, that if you want to fool people into thinking you’ve been working hard, the first step is to not blog; don’t say anything or do anything. And what do we say when we’re caught languishing, being quiet, inactive wallflowers? “Sorry, I’ve been incredibly busy.”

The louder your are, the less work you must have been doing. Quiet people doing all the work.

The truth, I have learned over the years by watching and listening, is closer to the opposite.

Twenty Years We have rampant inflation still, that the Biden administration would like to blame on external factors. “Supply chain issues” and such. Which in turn come from the China virus they won’t allow anyone to call the China virus. Ah…they’re not entirely wrong, but what is that? People were “sheltered in place,” ordered to stay home…and then allowed to stay home. Death of the workplace. They all gathered around the home swimming pool, or the video game console, maybe with a “work laptop” or maybe not, and they “worked.” Meanwhile the government sent them checks.

These were not the bloggers. The bloggers, by and large, were blogging in protest of this. Rather ineffectively.

When did gas go up 40% in price?

When did the price of milk, eggs and butter — double?

When did the public debt swell?

We, as a nation — as the civilized half of the planet, in fact — didn’t work. And in the aftermath, we didn’t have very good luck. Here we are closing out 2024, and our dollars are weak. They don’t buy very much. You don’t work, you don’t get “paid.” Sure you can take home as many of our arbitrary money units as you did before, even “earn” yourself some increases. But the value isn’t there for us, because we, as a whole, weren’t there adding value for each other.

“Raises have not kept pace with inflation,” the news repeats over and over. Right. No work, no pay.

It is truly marvelous that this late in the game, in the digital age, what we call “communism” remains geographically contiguous. Eastern Europe is more steeped in communism than Europe overall, and Europe overall is much more into it than the United States. But we still need to worry about “the spread of communism.” It’s just like a puddle of something someone spilled on a kitchen floor; swelling. The collectives are assimilating more organisms into it — looking for someone to do all the work. The people who are already within, haven’t been doing it. Not because they’re lazy. But because the incentives have been removed. Some would argue that’s the definition of lazy. But, being human, just try living with the incentives removed for a decade or so. Try living with punishment for working.

Communism, like progressivism and Satan, has to keep changing its name, and for much the same reason as those other two: For it to accomplish what it wants to do, it can’t afford to be seen by the populace at large, as destructive an agent as it truly is. It’s the same story over and over again: Everyone understands their continuing survival depends on work, and everyone expects someone else to be doing all of it.

And then nobody does it.

And then our “luck” turns bad, and scarce.

There’s another quote that addresses this directly, one we have caught on video: “Socialist governments…always run out of other people’s money.” Margaret Thatcher.

This isn’t complicated at all. “Inflation” is simply a fancy name for what we should fully expect to be seeing in the aftermath of collective sloth. You present money to buy a thing; what is that? “Here is a dollar. It represents work I did.” That’s what you’re saying when you buy things, right? Oh. A dollar. “Work,” pffft. Right after we were all getting paid by the government to lounge around the swimming pool, participating in “zoom” meetings, and then heading inside to towel off and play video games. Tell you what; you got another one of those? If you do, then we can haggle, otherwise off with you.

And that’s inflation.

Individuals may rightly protest: Unfair! I worked as hard during the China virus debacle as I did before. Harder, even! And they’re right. But that’s the cost of living in a collective. The collective is lazy, and endures the consequences of being lazy; YOU are lazy. Unfair? Absolutely. You might have been working your ass to the bone. You might be a first-responder who’s been saving others. It’s the height of unfairness. That’s why we don’t like it.

Blame the people who have been saying something about it? “They’ve been blogging so that must mean they’re not doing any work!”

My twenty years have taught me many things, and that one thing above & before all the others: This premise is off course by about 180 degrees.

Generally speaking, experience has shown it’s the people who were quiet about the whole thing, who cashed the checks, and spread the suntan oil and continued with the napping and the video game playing and the lounging. And subsequently, were the most shocked that prices had skyrocketed as the dollar, that token of “work I got done to buy the thing,” lost its value. It wasn’t their fault. They thought they were being good citizens of the country and of their various employing entities. They went to wherever they were led. When they were led to the swimming pool and the video game console, they obliged, and when they were given checks for being idle, they cashed them.

Blogging is not work. But, it is “If you see something, say something.” And if you’re working, or trying to get work, struggling to figure out how you can contribute to society productively, you’re going to be seeing quite a lot, and much of it will have been, these past two decades, very, very wrong. That doesn’t make bloggers better people than non-bloggers. I would never go that far with these observations.

But I will say, if someone’s been existing these last twenty years, not seeing anything wrong; there must be something way heap busted about them. It’s been a rather goofy stretch of time, hasn’t it? We may disagree about what policies were good or bad, or who came up with the problems and who came up with the solutions. But we should all agree it hasn’t exactly been a steady hand on the tiller of the ship of state. Blogging doesn’t fix that. But silence comes with a guarantee no one will fix anything. And no guarantee at all — contrary to popular opinion — that someone’s getting real work done.

People who’ve been getting the work done, almost always, will have something to say about it. We should make a point of listening to them.

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Choices About Cheating
Sunday, November 10th, 2024

So what I’m getting out of this, is that we get cheating if we are negligent. We don’t need to wonder about it and we don’t need to indulge in silly mind games like “Prove beyond the doubt the cheating happened or else you’re obliged to accept that it didn’t.” If you leave the hen house unlocked, the fox will have a feast, period end of story. Leave the pie on the shelf, the flies will attack; leave the fish on the counter the cat will take it, etc., etc., pick your metaphor.

If we are vigilant, the cheating stops.

This graph that was put together and put up at ZeroHedge, really tells the whole story. The room for doubt it leaves, will have to be decided by each viewer — but in any case it doesn’t leave much.

It’s just like any other field of endeavor involving a valuable asset that has to be secured. If we allow the cheating, we get it. If we get the cheating, we get rampant inflation and Putin invades the Ukraine.

If we don’t allow the cheating, the other guy wins and we get screaming liberals.

Seems to me from the last four years, that’s the whole takeaway. Am I missing anything? Remain vigilant against cheating, deal with toddlers and temper tantrums as many an adult must…allow the cheating, deal with ALL the other adult problems. At their worst. Hard to get a job, hard to keep it, month left at the end of the money, inflation, widespread poverty, idiots in charge, all the problems up to, and possibly including, World War III.

I seek only to distill down to its essentials, this binary choice that has emerged to confront us. The reader will not benefit from me saying which one I’d pick. We all have to make our own decisions.

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He’s Been President Already
Sunday, November 10th, 2024

It’s the weekend. The election was on Tuesday.

I have seen and heard from many, many Harris supporters struggling to figure out how their side lost. Many of them are reporting what they’ve seen and heard from others. Many ideas. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Not all unique, but…lots of effort to figure out where they went wrong.

Not a single one has said anything even vaguely resembling: We conjured up all these fearful prognostications about what life would be under a guy who’s been President already. We didn’t scare ’em like we wanted to. Because he’s been President already.

The most obvious theory. Just lying out there, bloated and baking in the sun belly-up, like road kill, waiting to be…theorized upon.

Not a single Harris supporter has stumbled across it.

Not one.

It’s truly amazing.

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On Leadership
Thursday, October 31st, 2024

Something has happened relatively recently with the concept of leadership, and it isn’t good. It might have started with the pandemic, or maybe a little bit before that with the Disney Star Wars movies. Someone takes over something; they announce with great fanfare their guiding principles, which may be “woke,” but there may be something else wrong with them. And right off the bat they have their critics and they have their defenders, with most of the earnest enthusiasm “enjoyed” by the former as it’s already easy to see what’s going to go wrong.

There’s lots of bluster about “I’m large and in charge” or whatever, but no responsibility taken for bad results. The response to the criticism that should be expected, is a gritty determination to keep on making the same mistakes — and there’s nothing you can do about it! And, to call the critics sexists or racists. Name-calling and intransigence. That’s the rebuttal to the criticism, any & all criticism.

It’s as if the entire “civilized” world woke up one morning and decided: Leadership is nothing but being obstinate and pushy.

Meanwhile, the despair felt far and wide, from having someone “in charge” who won’t listen to anybody else, won’t self-correct or learn from mistakes, and won’t take responsibility for the mistakes made — is palpable. It thickens month by month, year by year, to the point you can almost cut it with the metaphorical knife. It metastasizes into a depression, which the “leadership” notices, and usually blames on someone else.

It wasn’t like this just a short time ago. What happened? How do we fix it?

Maybe we can hold a contest. They do seem to be competing with each other to see who can come up with the worst ideas, the fastest, or implement them with the most intense of misplaced enthusiasm, or show the greatest agility in dodging responsibility. Or, to display the most intractable resolve to maintain the bad policy in response to reasoned criticism.

Within arts and fiction, the clear winner would be Kathleen Kennedy. Whoever is the runner-up, isn’t worth mentioning because the gap between the two is so broad, it isn’t even close. It’s just embarrassing to listen to her anymore. People have entirely given up on her company, and on the industry as a whole. She’s literally destroyed movies.

Out here in the real world of public policy, it might be Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, maybe Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. This weird new brand of leadership that consists of just being stubborn, learning nothing, regretting nothing, conceding no points to their opposition no matter how valid the criticism may be, is commonly illustrated to us as women finally finding their voice. This is unfair to women, for it isn’t only women doing this. Gavin Newsom of California has come up with just as many bad ideas as anybody, done at least as much damage as anyone else, and certainly takes the cake in avoiding responsibility. Or, responding to valid criticism with that now-familiar gritty determination to change exactly nothing and keep-on keeping-on. Should I list examples? It’s hard to know where to begin. Criminal justice reform, battling the “homeless” problem, taxation, environmental — he sucks at all of it and will admit to no errors, concede no points to his critics, change nothing.

It’s like the public at large is a wild animal, and “leadership” in both arts and politics is engaged in a long, drawn out maneuver that does nothing but wound and then corner the animal, giving it nowhere to go. This doesn’t seem smart, to me anyway. Looks like just asking for something bad to happen.
It wasn’t always like this. Leadership used to listen. Maybe show a bit of lethargy in admitting to mistakes, I guess that’s to be expected. But time was, they’d eventually either admit to the mistakes, or quietly change strategy.

I guess, now that we have “social media,” the spoken word enjoys greater currency and greater agility. The criticism flows easily, but the rebuttal to the criticism flows even more easily. The rebuttal, unlike the criticism, doesn’t have to make sense. Just a theory I have to explain it. I’m not sure.
But it’s obvious, lately, when there is valid criticism and then rebuttal to the criticism, the rebuttal consistently wins. Someone is expecting it to go that way. And, it is going that way.

This does not portend good things. We know smaller problems that ought to get fixed, today, and don’t get fixed, grow into larger problems that arise tomorrow. We know cornering a wounded beast is never a smart idea.

And it’s been awhile by now since I’ve seen quality leadership. By which I mean, don’t make good decisions all the time necessarily, but at least admit it and change things in the aftermath of having made some bad ones. I haven’t seen that in a very long time. We seem to be getting quite comfortable with bad leaders making bad decisions and then showing a bad intransigence in keepin’-on the same way. It’s quickly becoming the default strategy of leadership, and everywhere. I’m really not sure what we can do about this.

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Men Are Replaceable
Thursday, October 31st, 2024

The narrative is that men are replaceable. I say “the narrative is” because the desire to believe it came first. People act like the evidence came first and after awhile, someone noticed it out loud. That would be legitimate. But it wouldn’t be accurate. The desire to believe came first and we’re waiting on the evidence; that’s essentially what a narrative is.

Reasonable discussions can be had about whether the evidence has emerged, or whether we’re still waiting on it, or whether it never will emerge because it isn’t true. But that is not the point I wish to inspect. I want to look into the desire to believe that men are devoid of unique purpose and could be easily replaced. It’s everywhere, and it’s intense. From whence does it come? Seems rather useless to me. Are we all supposed to be going somewhere?

This is not an offshoot of women’s lib. It is ancient. It goes back to the days when the woman’s father reserved all the agency in screening out her suitors. “You can do better than him.” It has always run in one direction. Men did not talk about whether they or their sons could do better than the current wife, girlfriend or…obsession. They acted on it, and that’s philandering, or infidelity. Men have been at that for quite awhile. But this has always been a quiet pastime. They acted on it but didn’t speak of it. They didn’t huddle together in these groups to figure out for sure, or make dinner table conversation out of, Is it time to dispose of and replace the wife. But “she can do better than him” hangs around extended family frameworks, across years, even decades, like a bad smell. It’s common. And it isn’t quiet.

This asymmetry is reflected in our fiction, as well as in our truth. The ready made family, joining up with a stepdad. You’ll notice throughout the years, as the female head-of-household has become more and more normalized, the backstory has gone entirely missing. She has kids? You still need a man to come up with those. Where’s the bio-dad? Alive or dead? You may as well be asking where a cow got her calves. “Not in the picture” is a good enough answer, assuming the question is ever asked at all. And it usually isn’t.

This isn’t true of fictional exploits in which a stepmom integrates with a single dad and his kids. When that happens, there has to be a backstory. Where’s the mom? Usually dead. But you have to say what happened to her. Moms are not so easily replaced. A story that even weakly suggests they might be, will surely end up on the cutting room floor before anyone sees it.

“Women can do anything men can do” is a commentary on men being disposable. It’s false. “Men can do anything women can do” would be equally false, but we don’t need to worry about that because no one says it.

We accept — correctly — that women are not replaceable. We men can’t do what they do. Where they are present, and then disappear, they leave a hole. No one bothers to pretend any different.

“Your husband or boyfriend could do better than you” has always been just plain rude. Like asking a woman what she weighs, or how old she is. It just isn’t done. It’s one of those double standards feminism was built to confront, in its pursuit of “equality” — and once they confronted this one, they left it alone because they liked it. It’s always been part of western civilized society that women, and whoever cares about them, should wonder constantly if they can do better than him, but men are not supposed to wonder if they can do better than her.

Ann Landers put the pedal to the metal: “Are you better off with him, or without him?”

There are three reasons for this.

Men are protectors. It is fitting, when you have a protector, to wonder if you can somehow get hold of a better protector. But we can’t have our protectors wondering if there’s someone else somewhere more worthy of their protection. That wouldn’t be a very suitable protector.

Women are shoppers. Men don’t shop much, and when they do they shop like their pants are on fire and they can’t put it out until they’re done shopping. In-and-out. So for centuries, women have monopolized the experience of shopping, and the natural sharpening and honing of skills that comes with engaging the activity. It’s natural for a shopper to wonder if she’s acquired the correct product in the correct quantity, and then wonder about it some more. Even after the sale is closed, the question remains open. But we can’t very well have our merchandise wondering if the shopper is good enough.

And, eyelash-politics. Men just aren’t as cute. You have an opportunity to climb the social ladder when you reinforce a woman’s questions, or inspire her to start pondering the questions, about whether her current mate is good enough for her. Women have longer eyelashes and they’re easier on the eyes. People relate to women. You don’t slog your way up the food chain by looking out for a man’s interests. We pretend men run the world and have been running it throughout the centuries, like the men have been on top. Men have actually been on the bottom this whole time. It’s true in the animal kingdom as well: You work your way up through the social hierarchy, not by looking out for a man’s interests or defending his status in his household or in the tribe, but rather by challenging it.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Modern society wonders aloud if it can do without men, or if it has to have men, how interchangeable they are. As this question has intensified, the men have been wondering more and more if they can do without society. That is a turn of events entirely unanticipated by those with the most strident opinions, the ones who insist that since men are so replaceable, it’s up to each man to work continuously on improving himself, to make himself the best, so that no one will think of replacing him — even though they could, on a lark. Men are responding to this with a pointed question about why they should bother, with the criteria for keeping versus replacing being so arbitrary, and the decision to replace being more and more a fait accompli.

Perhaps I’m biased, but it seems to me that this fad of man-ejecting and man-swapping, or of casually thinking about doing it, where it was destined to bring some positive deliverables to society at large, has already brought them. That we’ve crossed the point of diminishing returns. I think we crossed it when men started to hesitate to sacrifice things to build up their careers, which could come to an end on someone’s arbitrary say-so. And were no longer being relied-upon to feed, clothe and provide for others.
We have been building advanced “societies” for many thousands of years by now, and in doing so we’ve lost our innocence, lost our excuse for having not learned some rather plain lessons. We know now that a society has to value the people in it, all of them. All of the people who contribute constructively to it, anyway. If it doesn’t, then those people will not value the society, and society loses value overall. Then everything becomes a little bit less functional than it was before.

There’s no advantage in asking if a specific demographic is disposable, or replaceable. By all means, feel free to ask that of individual people, based on their individual acts. But don’t ask that of groups based on their immutable characteristics. That’s bigotry and it doesn’t help anybody.

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They Chase Their Rainbows
Thursday, October 31st, 2024

Kamala Harris could still emerge victorious in this thing, but she’s not doing quite as well as she’d like, I think. There’s no one single misstep to point to for the bulk of the blame. I perceive that the American public is belatedly catching on to what’s long been obvious to just some of us: Liberalism is not about solving problems, or even about making anything better. It is rainbow-chasing and complaining. It is just like a rainbow in fact. Most coherent, definable and relatable when distant, losing any semblance of structure upon the observer’s approach.

Every single issue follows the same pattern. The liberal agitator states the case for reform, and it isn’t tiny-step reform, it requires societal overhaul: Oppressors are oppressing victims. The victim’s situation is this, and that, and this and that, and such and such and so and so. “And we think that’s wrong!!!” Stating this case, they capture all they want to capture. Hearts, minds, votes, emotions. And then there’s some kind of incursion, involving some combination of force and guile. The movement becomes an actual movement, with the good guys making good-guy movement into bad-guy territory. Like the Trojan horse into the city’s gates. Activists, and their sympathizers, go to where the problem is, where the slope-foreheads occupy, those undesirables who have yet to be enlightened.

And then…?

Confront the problem-people. And…?

Convert them? Isolate them? Banish them? Obliterate them? What are we doing now?

Each single individual curled up in the belly of the great wooden beast, might have a good solid understanding of next steps. But a consensus has yet to emerge. And it won’t. If such a consensus were necessary, it would, but it isn’t. And that’s the embarrassment right there. In the end, it turns out to be all about the bitching. And the incursion. The posing of an inconvenience onto others. That’s all.

Just the tiniest sampling of available issues confirms this…

America is a racist nation! Easy to say. But then the position is…no wall at the border. Everybody is seeking asylum. From what? Uh, something, so okay. Remain here. Everyone ought to be able to get in, and stay, and “path to citizenship,” and vote, and we will mock and ridicule you if you so much as suggest it shouldn’t happen, or that some further case evaluation has to be done even on an individual level, that some of these might be terrorists. That’s racist! They all have to be here! Well if America is a racist nation, why are we doing this? You won’t let us take a closer look at these people, because if we want to do that we’re racists, even though it’s confirmed we’re that already, and the people we want to study are brown, so you want to be nice to the brown people and keep them in a racist nation. The logic falls apart.

Next issue. Patriarchy! Put a woman in the White House! Okay. But we already have woman governors and legislators. We’ve actually had quite a few of those, and for quite a while. Have we gotten rid of patriarchy? Dissenters and reform sympathizers alike would agree, no we have not. Wasn’t so long ago we were going to get rid of racism by electing a black President. That guy is term-limited out now, and following His eight years, have we cured racism? It’s noticeable how far backward we’ve regressed, and how quickly. There’s more bitching about it in the aftermath of His presidency than there was before. Race relations have noticeably deteriorated. That administration was lots of things, but the resolution to any sort of a problem was not one of the things.

Next issue. Capitalism! How terrible it is! It exacerbates inequality! Exploits the masses! Alright…so what do we do? Once again, liberalism turns out to be all about putting the horse inside the gates, going to the hated-thing and — what? Take it over? The liberals have invaded corporate America through the “human resources departments,” forcing the diversity-equity-inclusion nonsense upon the businesses. And? C.A.L.W.W.N.T.Y.: “Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet”…forever. Again, we do not solve the problem. We don’t even chip away at it. And, again, that’s after giving the liberal reformers every little thing they want, no exceptions. Everything they want plus a few things.

It’s rainbow chasing. They approach the goal, and as they get closer, the goal loses composition and deteriorates. Every time.

What they lack in problem solving, they more than make up for in reducing and berating. They’ve got men apologizing for being men and they’ve got white people apologizing for being white. Then what? When the white guy appears before you offering his regrets and his atonement for being white, what do you do then? Forgive him? Welcome him into the fold? Execute him? Certainly, you hold him up as an example of what other white people should do, but after that? Nobody seems to know. Or, to be precise about it, I suppose I should say: A few individuals “know,” but nobody seems to agree.

Like a small child, they’re excited by the approach. The junction point between rainbow and ground, is fixated on a tiny spot, over there! Half an acre, maybe less. Maybe I’m already familiar with that place, how exciting! It’s practically riveted to that spot, over by the tree stump!

And…we approach. Everything changes. It’s not supposed to happen that way, but it does.

Because things change upon approach, the “overhaul” becomes all about the incursion. It becomes purely binary: We go into the bad people’s territory, that’s good. They make an incursion into ours, that’s super duper duper bad. The college kids protesting when a conservative speaker comes to talk, confirm this direction-sensitive passion. It’s quite intense.

The longer I watch conservatives and liberals go at it, the more it looks to me like we’re having a fundamental disagreement about the nature of problem solving. Conservatives are into presuming the worst, so as to engage preventative plans while those plans can still be effective and preventative in nature, thus less invasive and less costly. But they’re also into learning from experience, and experience suggests the conservatives don’t have it completely right either; it consistently shows the liberals are invested in putting the horse inside the city gates and then just sitting there, divided among themselves about what to do next. An argument could be made that this infighting is so all-consuming, that perhaps the horse isn’t a threat after all, and the problem is limited to an object simply being where it doesn’t belong. So the great conflict is about stopping the horse from entering the gates.

As far as what the liberals, and their fresh recruits, need to worry about: It’s a betrayal. The liberals do their complaining about patriarchy or white supremacy, and they pick up the support of those who don’t care too much about ideology and just want to be compassionate. People who want the problem solved. Once the recruitment is done, the rainbow chasing begins. The liberals don’t solve the problem. They don’t even get to the part where they eliminate people, subjugate people or convert people. They just do a lot of bitching. You know. The fun part.

They don’t catch the rainbow. They don’t get to the massacre. If they were so disorganized as to remain completely ineffective, the rest of us could just ignore it all. But along the way, they govern ineptly, and do a lot of damage.

Among those who have figured this out, if only partially, there seems to be a myth that has become entrenched — that the worst betrayal the liberals can inflict, once empowered, is to do nothing. But just look at the large, dense cities laboring away under their tutelage. The poverty, the blight, the vices, the dereliction among living things and inanimate objects. The common theme permeates, achieving a consistency up to and past the point of monotony. Dozens of examples, surely hundreds, maybe thousands. All those cities, run by liberals, looking the same. You don’t stay still with their kind in charge. You lose. Their leadership is toxic. It makes the problems worse.

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Go Ahead and Discuss Things
Monday, September 30th, 2024

Regardless of how the election goes, I’m still concerned. Things are good, but broken. They are good in spite of being broken, and may not remain good for long because of the breakage. And the breakage didn’t happen overnight. Things got broken in phases, and they’re still breaking.

I’m seeing a lot of people “winning arguments” by saying “I don’t care.” What is that? If you don’t care about something, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you shouldn’t care about it. Maybe you should, in which case, if you still don’t care about it, that makes you something of an ignoramus. It doesn’t make you superior to anybody. Really when you get down to it, apathy is just a feeling. That’s the problem here. People making important decisions based on feelings, not taking into account all the things they should be taking into account because they “don’t care.” It’s incompetent decision-making. And it’s seemingly become the default.

I see people brushing aside evidence of something by saying “There is no evidence of that.” What they really mean to say is, although this is just the latest circumstantial evidence of something, there hasn’t been any direct evidence. They’re refusing to consider trace evidence of something, suggestive evidence. They don’t like where it points. So they’re laying down a new rule, of sorts, that you have to prove things beyond any reasonable doubt, in order to merely consider them as possibilities, and if you can’t do that then you’re not allowed to even mention them as possibilities. That’s quite absurd. More incompetent decision-making.

I’m seeing there are people elevated to these platforms of “expertise,” as in, “Let’s listen to the experts” which means just do what they say without question. We see a lot of this in tech. The “experts” often turn out to be kids embarking on adulthood, who’ve been hailed as “technophiles” and “techies” because they know more about tech than anybody else in the family…and more often than not, that turns out to be computer games. They knew how to deliver a killing blow in Mortal Kombat involving four, five, six or more buttons pushed in rapid sequence. It’s a common confusion: People who use the tech, are worshiped by others as if they built the tech, and they come to believe that this is the tech they’ve mastered, building what they in reality merely know how to use. Kids who’ve been gifted with smartphones too early in life, hailed as if they’ve mastered all it takes to engineer the phone.

Learning disabilities: We just diagnose them, medicate and move on — leaving the child handicapped for life. Because again, “the experts” have spoken. This is a particularly pernicious habit we have, for the effects are long lasting. “Experts” are people who profit from the prevalence of this hitherto undiscovered learning disability, and yet once they say someone has it, the rest of us who do not share in the profits, aren’t even allowed to talk back.

What these all have in common is an open discussion that should be happening, and isn’t, because too many people either don’t know how to discuss things or aren’t comfortable with discussing those things. Perhaps that’s the epicenter of the breakage, the original point of origin of where things started to get broken. Discussing things is something we should supposedly stop doing, because discussing is arguing, and arguing is heated. So we stopped discussing?

But we haven’t stopped arguing, and things are heated.

That’s why I think maybe, just maybe…we as a society took a wrong turn back there. Should have kept discussing things.

Someone stands up and says “Stop discussing things, just do it my way” we should have said “Sit down, junior, we’re going to keep discussing it” instead of what we did say. Something like “Yeah, sure, okay, I don’t see why not, let’s do that then.”

We should discuss things, because people are flawed. It’s easier to come up with a bad idea than a good one. But no idea is so toxic that we’ll be doing further damage merely by talking about it, or defining what it is, or defining some of the arguments against it. If people don’t know how to discuss something, that’s really their own problem and we should treat it that way.

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Voting on Maturity Levels
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

As the radical Left and the beltway swamp continue to blame Trump for the attempts on his life, after going nearly a full decade with their constant windbaggery about what an “existential threat” he is and how he’s “basically Hitler” — a thought occurs to me. It’s a thought about a rethink. Maybe we need to do one. Maybe it’s overdue.

We have these “issues.” Supposedly, we can separate Left from Right by way of these issues. An unwanted pregnancy; kill it, or put it up for adoption? Trouble is, a lot of these issues are manufactured. Repeal Obamacare? What will you replace it with? How do we “shore up Social Security”? And hey, experts say this-or-that county is back in trouble with the Covidiot numbers. So they should repeat the ineffective rituals there? Hey buddy, where’s your mask?

And some of these issues aren’t good litmus-test issues, because the sides switch. Hawks or doves? It used to be, The Left counseled caution, understanding, compromise and appeasement, “nuanced” and “shades of gray” thinking, while The Right was more ready to rattle sabers. Sometime in either the Trump or Obama eras, this flipped. Trump supporters would say that’s the benefit of having a strong presence in the White House; confronting the belligerents properly and with effective negotiation tactics, you lose the need to rattle sabers. I notice nobody else seems to be offering any cogent alternative explanation.

The Mobius Strip Twist with “questioning authority” confounds and perplexes me. Back when housewives spent weekend afternoons cooking roasts for their husbands, who were out in the driveway changing oil in the family sedan, and beer cans were steel and had pull tabs — this was easy peasy. The Left meant questioning authority, up to and past the point of anarchy. Now The Left means fawning obeisance to St. Anthony and not-questioning any of his most questionable dictates. The Right, meanwhile, having been lied to about anything and everything over the years, and having noticed, scrutinizes everything and when they’re criticized for this, they scrutinize the criticism. The two sides have switched; they were emphatic in their positions before, and are even more emphatic about their newer positions now. What happened? I can form some a theory about it, several in fact. But none of them justify my complete confidence. I’m open to the ideas of others.

Most to all of the other issues melt down into the now familiar non-form and non-shape puddles of nonsense and goo. And that includes everything economic: Whatever you’re experiencing that’s good, our side gets the credit, and so far we’ve received short shrift on that. Not getting the credit we deserve. Whatever you’re experiencing that’s bad, blame the other guys. Both sides argue this way. The few positions that emerge that appear to be actual positions, are really just historical artifacts from this-or-that highly visible party-aligned figure, usually a President, having done something out in the open with great fanfare. And we argue about whether that was a good idea or not.

That all is prelude to my main point, which is this: Sometime over the last several years, like forty of them give or take — sometime since “supply side economics” or “voodoo economics” — positions on issues lost their definitional power to indicate to us what a party, faction or ideology was supporting or opposing. We see this now all too clearly, as “Trump is worse than Hitler and must be kept from power” has become a dominant “issue.” Then we have this derivative issue of the two assassination attempts against him this summer, and what culpability the loudmouths have in motivating that after calling him Hitler all these years. As issues go, this one doesn’t look difficult or murky, to me; how many times can you publicly call a man Hitler, before someone decides to do something about it?

And does it really make sense to evade responsibility, ducking behind the heat-shield of “one man’s words are not another man’s action,” after burning off months and years going on and on about “Trump incited an insurrection on January 6”?

But to go on all this time pegging Donald Trump as an “existential threat to our democracy” and threatening violence against him, and fight-fight-fight; watch the assassination attempts unfold; and then, monologue some more about how the target‘s “inflammatory rhetoric” is to blame for these assassination attempts. It is, as Darth Vader might have said, impressive, most impressive. Indeed you are bonkers, as the Emperor has foreseen…

What we’re looking at here is this unwritten and unspoken policy among the American Left, that you never concede anything that would stir up a headwind against the flight path of your agenda. Never say what a decent person would say: “Crazy people are motivated by a fuzzy confluence of many different factors, and the possibility exists that my words contributed. I will try to be more mindful of my rhetoric in the future.”

The cult forbids it. Instead deny, deny, deny, and on your way back from denying, do what damage you can against The Target. Inside the echo chamber I’m sure it looks like something that makes a lot of sense: Trump is to blame for the assassination attempts on Trump! He needs to tone down his irresponsible rhetoric!

Outside the echo chamber though, it looks like what it is. Nuts.

The thought that occurs to me is, maybe we’re in a new era now and we’re no longer voting on issues at all. If we reward this absolute and unyielding reluctance to accept any responsibility, we are bound to see a lot more of it. I can think of no quicker way to make all of America look like the worst of our blight-infested, crumbling, democrat-run and economically destroyed inner cities. Surveying the hundreds and hundreds of those, you find that’s the key ingredient to the deterioration: Lack of accountability among those who wield the greatest influence. Oh no, nothing wrong with my decisions. Oh no, nothing wrong with my statements or actions in office. Oh no. Can’t be that. It must be climate change.

Issues have given way to maturity levels.

These are the people who grew up telling mommy that actually, what I was doing was putting the cookie back into the jar. And unfortunately, we are left to surmise, mommy bought it and in so doing reinforced to the sneaky little shit that he can equivocate and prevaricate his way out of anything and everything.

A generation, or two generations maybe, came and went.

And now this is the true difference between the “parties.” One side, embarrassed in public repeatedly by the highly visible debacles involving Jussie Smollett, Hunter Biden’s laptop, “Russia Russia Russia,” Steele Dossier, Mueller Report…concedes nothing. Not even as a throwaway prelude, palliative packaging material to cram in before the word “but” on the way to making a stronger, opposing point. They won’t even do that. True cult thinking.

I mean, you try it. Facing down a Trump hating leftist, challenge them to concede there never were any prostitutes hired to pee on a bed. Be completely up front with them. “My litmus test for a cult is, that you can’t concede stories were told, and given high visibility, about Trump and they turned out to be false. Let’s see if you can concede just one of those.” See if they can admit it was a falsehood, even given that. They won’t do it. It’s less of a concern that the cult be exposed, than that they be kicked out of it.

And we the electorate — whether we realize it or not — sit in judgment of this when we cast our votes. We give signals about tactics, whether we should see more of them or less of them. What we reward and what we punish, determines what will be deployed in future campaigns. When I say, in politics, “cause is effect, and effect is cause,” I’m talking about that. When you see bizarre campaign tactics used that weren’t known or even imaginable just a few years ago, that’s because someone tried it for the first time, and it worked. The mud stuck to the wall.

We’re voting on maturity levels, and on cult thinking. We’re sending signals about how the country overall does its thinking. How grown-up of a society we are.

Issues are effectively dead, or are at least dying.

That’s my thought.

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Badass Rebels
Friday, August 16th, 2024

When I was a child, we were a nation at war although it didn’t always feel like it. It was an unpopular war. This had an effect of defining what “Left” and “Right” meant. Right was law-and-order; you did what you were told. Left meant you were always ready for that confounding moment when obeying the law meant doing something immoral, and your moral code imposed on you an obligation to flout the law. “Civil disobedience” they called it.

The division started when people on The Left stopped being ready to flout the law, and started being eager to flout it. It intensified with the Watergate Scandal, which culminated in an impeachment showdown, with Congress against the President. The Law against The Law. It was a confusing time.

Not so confusing, though, as now. The Left remains eager to flout the law, but this eagerness to apply critical thinking where their opposition had abandoned it — it’s simply not there. Perhaps it was mythical in the first place. “Joe Biden’s running, don’t even question it because Kamala is dead weight” replaced, in a matter of minutes, with “Kamala is the best thing since sliced bread and so is Stable-Boy Tim.” Nobody can sell the idea that this twisty-turn, in a single day, en masse, is the result of individual thinking. Nobody tries. They just memory-hole all the relevant events and pretend it never happened.

And the masks! It’s 2024, you’re still walking around with a mask?

How obedient.

It seems we’re learning something about civil disobedience, about rebelling. Seems the human genome can only rebel against one authority figure. Once the rebellion is entirely triumphant and the old authority figure is displaced by a new one, you get complete unquestioning obedience, up to and past the milepost of immorality, into the realm of the absurd.

I’m no longer a spring chicken. I have a head full of gray hair, my Dad died last fall and now my brother and I are senior patriarchs of the clan. And yes, when I sleep wrong I’m in pain for the next two or three months. Feeling the years. But it seems my entire lifespan has been sucked up into a single lesson about authority, law-and-order, and rebellion. I’m still not entirely clear on what I’ve been learning for it looks like nobody else is clear on it either.

But from all I’ve seen of it, the rebellion is not, after all, rigidly attached to any kind of moral code. From what I’ve seen, it’s just rocking the boat for the sake of rocking the boat. The very act of substituting one authority figure with another, is the whole point. Once that’s done, without fail, obedience is restored. More strident, unthinking and slavish than any obedience that came before.

And throughout it all, and beyond, the “rebels” think they’re rebels. Fine, upstanding, moral-code-living, stout hearted badass rebels.

It’s almost cute.

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The Release Candidate
Saturday, August 3rd, 2024

Somewhere I saw one of these “man in the street interview” clips, and the question had something to do with feminism and The Patriarchy. The guy with the microphone allowed the radicalized social-studies girl, who seemed very nice by the way, no facial piercings or green/purple hair, to sound off with all the familiar bumper sticker slogans and college-words. “Patriarchy” must have been one of those, because he had an interesting question: What would a “matriarchy” look like?

Oh, well I suppose guys could still go to school, but women would graduate more often and they’d get the better and higher-paying jobs. Guys would still work, and doing the lower, menial jobs the females don’t want to do. Something like that.

Follow-up: What’s the difference between that, and what we have?

Um, err, ah, uh…don’t know.

This got me to thinking. Here and there in The Bible, we have some entries that seem to establish the male sex as dominant, coming into existence first, etc. Following those, there are wrinkles and contradictions, along with hundreds of years of biblical scholars trying to noodle these things out and make sense of them. What if it’s an error in interpretation?

Civilization after civilization, we see men dominating — “on paper,” you might say. A populace elects or installs some kind of council or legislature, all or mostly men. But very few things get done that men would want, and women wouldn’t. A lot of things get done that women want, that men don’t.

It is what we should expect to see happen. Beth Dutton said it best: They have all the pussy and half the money.

Suppose we just presume God made women first, and see if all the things we’ve observed about life, and our place in the world, fall into place. Just picture it.

God would realize in the immediate aftermath, assuming She didn’t see it coming ahead of time, that there’s something going on here, at worst an architectural oopsie, or at best, an unfinished critical task. Woman would require a helpmate, one capable of getting her pregnant. And so God assembles a response team of Her most trusted and capable angels. The satisfaction of Woman is a core requirement, but this is difficult to achieve and many prototypes are discarded over this. Never Happy

Perhaps this is what drives the human equation: Chasing the approval of women, which is like chasing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I said all things we know about the world, might fall into place. Looks like I was on to something.

But we’re here, so the trusted and capable angels must have made some progress.

Now picture the meeting when they finally come up with a release candidate. He is ready to have life breathed into him, impressive, masculine, reclining or sitting on some raised platform, the skulls and bones of his predecessors beneath his feet. Unveiled with flourish, along with new pronouns: He/Him/His.

God has questions, naturally.

Woman can live with this?

Yes, absolutely.

She’ll be satisfied and happy?

Erm, probably not.

But he’ll be an adequate helpmate for her?

Yes Boss. We made sure.

Why should she tolerate his presence?

We have imbued him with some advantages. He is taller than she is, so he can reach things she can’t. Also he’s somewhat stronger, so he can open jars she can’t open and do other things she can’t do.

Very good! What else?

His relationship with the flora and fauna is different from hers. He doesn’t creep out at the sight of bugs and other wiggly things, so he can smash those and make sure she doesn’t have to deal with them. We’re thinking later on, they can start to eat meat because he is fleet of foot and can chase things. His peripheral vision is more sensitive to movement, he doesn’t need as much sleep, and he can withstand greater extremes of heat and cold. In short, we have made him into a hunter.

So, he’ll teach her how to hunt?

No, he can’t teach her anything. Our plan is that he’ll do the hunting.

Yes that might work. What about money?

He can make more of it than she can, in less time. But we’ve planted in him an inexplicable desire to give it all to her.

Excellent! So between the two of them, who’s in charge?

He’ll think he is. But we’ve set him up to acquiesce to pretty faces and long eyelashes, and do whatever she says. If all else fails, we’ve put a “joystick” on him, if she plays with that he’ll agree to everything.

And he’ll bring her what she needs?

Yes, as fast as he can.

And he’ll tell her the truth?

Yes.

About everything? All things great and small?

Yes, and yes.

So for example, if she asks him if this fig leaf makes her ass look fat…?

At this last question, there is a hurried exchange of glances among this panel of angels. Much murmuring, many worried faces. After some tense moments, the impromptu discussion comes to an end and the head angel addresses the Heavenly Host once more:

Sorry, God. We’ll have another candidate in the morning.

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Un-Salesman
Wednesday, July 31st, 2024

The more I listen to Trump, the more I realize he is not a master salesman after all. He is an extremely competent salesman. He is better at selling things than I would be. He is much better than most. But among his talents, contrary to popular opinion, selling things is not his peak performance.

He really finds his groove un-selling things. Listing the reasons not to buy the other guy’s stuff. It’s like watching Winter by Antonio Vivaldi performed by a virtuoso. It’s like a vortex-confluence of raw natural born talent, lessons learned over years and years of doing it, and an earnest love and joy of actually doing it. You just want to bottle the performance and put a cork on top. Living greatness.

But after the atmosphere built up by the contagious enthusiasm has come and gone, and the tent has been dismantled and a good night’s sleep has restored sobriety — the core message remains. It’s not a druggy high. It’s durable logic and common sense. It’s truth. Everything he says, once you examine it objectively with patience for the details, is true. It’s only shocking or novel in some way because some people have become hooked on deceptiveness and duplicity. The conflict comes from people who are the problem. Like the villagers who’ve become accustomed to pretending the Emperor is wearing fine clothes, and their churlish attitude against the little boy who points out he’s actually naked.

Trump takes great delight in being that little boy. He’s not like me, or any of the other little boys who mutter dejectedly under our breath “Here we go again…” before pointing out there are no clothes. Trump could wax lyrically about how there are no clothes, morning noon and night, and with gusto.

He’s thoroughly enjoying himself, and his joy is contagious. He was clearly born for this role. The question is…does it do the country any good?

And the answer is — Hell yes. Like a man dying of thirst needs a glass of water. We’ve gotten punch-drunk on pretending the Emperor has clothes. And then we’ve done it a zillion more times. And then made a national pastime out of it. And then kept it up for a couple more generations.

If anybody’s embarrassed by someone else doing the un-selling, that means the un-selling is overdue. It’s the ointment stinging all the worse because the infection set in before you could get it applied.

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July Recap
Wednesday, July 31st, 2024

Put this month into a time capsule. You could do a lot worse.

Going into it I had some concerns already. How things shook out, is interesting, and that’s an understatement. As of the nation’s birthday, our incumbent p-Resident was beset with the task of picking up pieces of his own viability following the June 27 debate. It was historic. The first presidential debate in my lifetime where both sides weren’t insisting “Yeah, my guy totally won.” Trump cleaned Biden’s clock without even half trying. Donors insisted Biden drop out, suspending nearly $100 in cash. But nothing doing. Joe’s in it for the long haul!

Then…June 13, a date which will live in infamy. Trump came inches from death — actually a fraction of an inch. As minuscule a degree of separation as you can measure across time, and space. His noggin was supposed to explode in a gory mess with us all watching it live. Miracle it didn’t happen.

Also, our home coffee pot didn’t like the electrical juice supplied at the hotel where we were celebrating my birthday. I had a bit of an un-birthday there, coming out of it cornered, with a desperate problem to be solved, heading into it with a working coffee pot. Kind of backward of how birthdays are supposed to work, but also a reminder to be grateful for your relatively small problems when it seems like life’s out to get you. No one shot at us that weekend.

But then, with the month not nearly half spent, things only started to get strange.

The Director of the Secret Service did about as bad a job managing the resulting public relations debacle, as she had done actually running the Secret Service and preventing this thing from happening. Can’t put an agent on a sloped roof? Really? The Trump campaign should stop holding rallies outdoors? That’s even more historically significant than the assassination attempt itself, or at least, it would be if it stood. Free speech for political candidates only inside auditoriums, following the 2024 Trump assassination attempt. Would that have worked for both sides, or just one? There’s a heady question for you.

Trump proceeded to pick J.D. Vance as his running mate, and with his new martyr status, Biden had a tougher and tougher time closing up that post-debate poll gap, which from here on out only widened. By the following weekend he finally withdrew from the race and threw his support behind his Vice President Kamala Harris.

Diversity, Equity or Inclusion, or DEI. Our modern name for “affirmative action,” the practice of wholly abandoning the previous goal of a color-blind society, specifically looking at immutable characteristics in hiring and promotions, discriminating in the opposite direction. Indefensible, but somehow, the way we do things. People were already talking about it with the Secret Service director, both a beneficiary and implementer of DEI, who around this time resigned. And now the democrat standard bearer was Vice President Harris, who had no reason to be where she was, apart from DEI.

When you’re a DEI beneficiary you benefit from a lot more than just getting hired. The wind is at your back. Headlines started to lie, routinely, frequently, and with great gusto as if they were in competition with each other. Harris raised millions of dollars in a single day. Ha! More like, the previously mentioned millions of dollars were released, the condition of getting rid of Joe, having been met. Hey, News, you’re supposed to be telling us what’s going on in the world. Why you lyin’?

With a hundred days left to the election, or less than that, and only having just settled on who they’re going to run, the democrats were left in a bind. A weird bind. So they settled on solving it for themselves with exactly that word: weird. But this is the age of YouTube and people don’t need to intercept memos or plant bugs in conference rooms to find evidence of the coordination. They can tell just by listening, recording and reviewing. The democrats, supposedly the party of the forgotten and downtrodden, the last vestige of proper representation for those not sufficiently fortunate to populate the respected center of polite society and relegated to the fringes…are now obsessed with properly ostracizing anyone who’s “weird.” Everything is weird. Weird all the time. He’s weird, she’s weird, that’s weird.

Overnight, they’ve become a political party constituted from the Mean Girls who won’t let you sit at their table at lunch. Snooty elitist pricks. They’ve become what they’re supposed to hate.

Sorry to say, I’m heading out of the month with more intense gradations of the concerns I had going into it. I’m worried about courage. A nation where courage decisively dominates, wouldn’t have these problems. We wouldn’t have DEI, which to this straight white boy, looks like little more than a consequence of people failing to say “No, shut up, that’s ridiculous” at the opportune time. Why can’t reverse-discrimination at least work its way up through the ranks, painstakingly, one ladder run at a time like everyone else? How come it has to start out at the very top, receiving all this deference to authority it doesn’t deserve to have?

It makes everybody underneath, or at, look like clowns, total buffoons. And it does this over and over again. But because it’s at the top, you’re not allowed to notice. “So-and-so got the job because of DEI” is something you’re not allowed to say.

It’s significant, or else it isn’t. If it isn’t, we shouldn’t bother with it. It costs resources and makes people in weighty positions look ridiculous.

If it is, and it’s met the goal by way of someone getting a job they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise…we ought to be allowed to say so. It shouldn’t be the DEI advocates stopping us from pointing out the one benefit that can be perceived and then noticed as a result of its presence.

So it changes the outcome, or else it doesn’t. It has to be one or the other. It can’t be both.

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It Runs, and It Doesn’t Run
Thursday, July 4th, 2024

Last car I had to get rid of, was & was not mobile. The CarMax guy asked the question, the tow truck driver asked the question, everybody had to ask and I had to offer this Schrodinger’s-Cat answer of “yes and no.”

There was a crack in the outer wall of the engine block where the water pump was supposed to be affixed. So if your intent was to move the car from one parking lot space to another under its own power, it worked fine. If your vision was for anything of a longer and more useful term than that, then realistically the whole car was finished. This was a total.

If you worked hard at being foolish, you could say: Why get rid of it? It runs fine. Look, it’s going five, ten minutes…this obviously means it’ll go on forever. Drive it to work, go shopping, whatever. But if you live in the real world, that doesn’t work. It’s stupid.

My nightmare is that this is might be a suitable analogy for the United States of America whose birthday we celebrate today. We do all these things that cause overheating. Sophists seek to overhaul our culture along with our system of government, constantly. Their argument is “You know I’m wrong, and I know you know, and you know I know you know…but I’m going to win because I’ll scare people into thinking they’re racists sexists and bigots if they don’t agree with me.”

It must work. It’s worked before. Like moving my Honda Civic from parking lot space A to parking lot space B. Things get a little toasty but it works, right?

If you’ve got a brain in your head though, you know this doesn’t work. If you’ve got a brain in your head, you know this is a total. Time for the car to go. Car no longer among us. Car gone. Car doesn’t know it yet, but it’s dead. Dead car rolling.

I hope to heaven my analogy doesn’t work that way.

But I don’t know. I’m seeing an awful lot of overheating. On purpose. By some very smug people. And I’m seeing it often, like nobody who matters knows any other way to do it. It’s become the Modus Operandi by default, the way we’re gonna do it until & unless some other strategy emerges: Figure out who our enemy is, and then piss ’em off on purpose.

The engine runs, but the cooling system is broken.

Can you really keep it rolling?

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Memo For File CCXX
Sunday, June 30th, 2024

The version I heard of this joke, it was the husband who asked the question. They were a brand new married couple, just back from their honeymoon. The very first home-cooked meal. Also, there was an extra generation inserted because these jokes always have to have three iterations. The new bride cuts off the ends of the roast and the husband asks why. That’s the way my Mother always did it…

She asks Mom. Mom asks Grandma. Grandma asks great-Grandma. Great-great-Grandma still walks among us, thank goodness, in a nursing home…proceed to the punchline: “If I didn’t, it wouldn’t have fit in our pan.” It’s a commentary on business and how easy it is to get caught entrenched in policies and procedures that aren’t there for any established or rational reason, just that’s-the-way-we-always-dunnit. One of my own Mother’s favorite jokes. I’ve often wondered if, in the decade she and Dad were married before my brother and I made our appearances, something in real life happened to make her appreciate it.

That all having been said, did you catch what happened during the debate? President Biden, summing up the position of our friends the liberals…accurately, although incoherently, and frankly a little stupidly…but accurately. Summarizing the liberal take on the Dobbs decision:

It’s been a terrible thing what you’ve done.

The fact is that the vast majority of constitutional scholars supported Roe when it was decided, supported Roe. And I was – that’s – this idea that they were all against it is just ridiculous.

And this is the guy who says the states should be able to have it. We’re in a state where in six weeks you don’t even know whether you’re pregnant or not, but you cannot see a doctor, have your – and have him decide on what your circumstances are, whether you need help.

The idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying, we’re going to turn civil rights back to the states, let each state have a different rule.

[snip]

I supported Roe v. Wade, which had three trimesters.

First time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. A third time is between the doctor – I mean, it’d be between the woman and the state.

The idea that the politicians – that the founders wanted the politicians to be the ones making decisions about a woman’s health is ridiculous. That’s the last – no politician should be making that decision. A doctor should be making those decisions. That’s how it should be run. That’s what you’re going to do.

And if I’m elected, I’m going to restore Roe v. Wade.

[snip]

For 51 years, that was the law. 51 years, constitutional scholarship said it was the right way to go. 51 years. And it was taken away because this guy put very conservative members on the Supreme Court. Takes credit for taking it away.

The/this idea that…look…here’s the deal. Why does this guy have any supporters at all, let alone 81 million votes, when everything that comes out of his mouth is an insult to the intellect of the listener. Well that’s a different subject I suppose.

But did you catch it? This terrible thing the previous President did. Presidents do not decide such things, nor do they decide who decides them. They don’t decide states get to decide. Presidents nominate Supreme Court justices, along with other federal officers, with the advice and consent of the Senate by simple majority vote.

And then, once made whole — or not — the Supreme Court takes a look at these issues of interpretation and application of codified law, to see if established interpretations make sense. The nine made a call that the established interpretations, in the Roe v. Wade decision, didn’t make sense. The six justices affirming this decision included the three Trump nominated and saw confirmed, plus three others who were there already. “Terrible thing what you’ve done” is not so flagrantly inaccurate as to merit some kind of a “fact check,” as those things have worn out their welcome and become obnoxious distractions anyway. It’s spin. Not falsehood, but not the truth either. President Biden, in taking such a position, is talking down to idiots who don’t understand how any of this works.

He proceeds from there to fill us in on why the Dobbs decision is wrong and why the Roe decision was right. Because he’s a stuttering, incoherent, senile, possibly stricken and none too bright inarticulate boob, there’s a lot of nonsense in there. But if you peel away the “look” and the “here’s the deal” and “the idea that” — what you’re left with is an argument for unified authority sticking by one set of consistent rules. Biden and the liberals don’t like the fifty laboratories.

They liked Roe v. Wade, and it wasn’t because “the vast majority of constitutional scholars” liked it. For 51 years it was the law of the land, 51 years…

That’s the way we always done it!

This is exactly what “conservatives” are supposed to be doing, by way of definition: Defending ideas that aren’t entirely worthy of being defended, just because we’ve always done it that way. Now he’s got some other supporting arguments to make. A woman can go six weeks, or even more, not even knowing she’s pregnant and a state’s proscription and various restrictions against abortion can put her in a plight. But we’ve had 51 years to noodle through that, during which time the argument has become weaker and weaker. People have had time to realize some things.

“Politicians” don’t “make the decision.” Legislators legislate laws, that protect people. That includes the unborn.

We don’t “let” each state have a different rule. The states have that right, and they get it from God, not from the feds.

When judicial officers act like legislators, someone is getting gypped. Roe v. Wade is widely recognized as bad “law,” in no small part because it hasn’t got any business being a law at all. All Biden needed to realize this was step out of his echo chamber and talk to some “constitutional scholars” who aren’t marching in lockstep with liberal ideology.

This is an important observation to make because it reflects the times in which we live. We’re in uncharted territory here. Our “liberals” are not doing any liberating. They’re not for any new ideas like they’re supposed to be; quite to the contrary, they’re the homemaker cutting off the ends of the roast and throwing them in the trash, because Momma always did it that way. You heard what happened when Biden tried to summarize who decides what, when, and why, according to the always-done-it-this-way. You got a jumbled mess.

Liberals, we’re taught, are looking forward through the big windshield, while conservatives are obsessed with the halcyon images in the rear view mirror. That isn’t quite right. Conservatives are looking both forward and backward. Their arguments frequently reflect this: “If we do X, we’ll get such-and-such an thing; we know this for sure, because we’ve tried X before, over here…and here (good or bad) is what happened.” They want the car to get what it’s going, unscratched, with all its passengers uninjured.

Whereas liberals are focused on the steering wheel. They just want to be in control.

Not accountable for results, or anything like that. Just in control.

It’s a maturity thing. They never learned how to share control with anybody, to depend on anybody, to trust anybody. To share a society with other people who are deserving of respect.

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Cult
Wednesday, June 19th, 2024

Some people are “Ridin’ with Biden” and not relying on social services of any kind. We should look into that very carefully.

Back when it was Obama versus Romney, this crowd could say they were going after the superior leadership, the better wisdom, the Replacement Jesus. Now all the leadership, or whatever looked like it, is gone and it’s just Joe — stumbling, babbling, and having to be led offstage by his wife. People cay say they see leadership in that but it’s a lie and not a convincing one.

So what do they want?

The death of western civilization? The United States brought to its knees by an illegally permissive geographical border, manufactured famine and forced Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) policies? Are these all investors betting on America’s fortunes, and selling short? Maybe that. But there’s something else, something middle-class.

Americans, after all these years, are still struggling with the group dynamic. Some people commune with some other people, and in so doing create a conglomerate that is bigger than the sum of its parts. The hopeful narrative is that all communities are like that. “Not a one of us is as smart as all of us.” So seductive is this leitmotif that people can go their whole lives, seeing the opposite demonstrated to them over and over again, watching committees make some of the most execrable decisions just because they’re committees; and still they’ll cling to it. Some of the more toxic groups, meanwhile, have a way of handicapping their members. “You can’t be part of us if you think for yourself,” they’ll say. “Our emulsifying agent is fear, not hope. If you show you can do things without us that you can’t do with us, or if you merely aspire toward such an ability, you will be shunned.”

To be clear, not all gatherings are like that.

But when you’re in such a cult, it’s hard to see.

Even when you’re constantly put on the spot to prove your loyalty. To say “No, I don’t read anything, I don’t learn anything by myself that I don’t learn in the group. I can’t do anything for myself. I’m not like those people over there. I’m not M.A.G.A.”

That’s why people vote blue when blue won’t do anything for them. When they’re not poor enough to be fed by the blue, and not rich enough to speculate blue. In between, in the middle classes, they congregate-blue. Eggs milk and meat costing double means nothing to them; they’ll give up that, and much more, to maintain their good standing in the cult. The kind of community that demands individuals amputate the best of themselves — sometimes literally! — to avoid ostracism.

They don’t see themselves as cult members. And to be fair, that’s not an entirely precise term. They’re more like mediocre choir singers. Belting out a tune, hitting the right pitch, reciting the right lyrics — with just average competence. Sometimes below. Getting it right just maybe three quarters of the time. Not good enough to sing solo, hiding behind each other. So not “Ridin’ with Biden” but more like “Hidin’ with Biden.”

But if you want to stay in the group, you better keep hidin’. If you’re good enough to sing solo, or if you merely try to improve so that one day maybe you can — you’re making the other mediocre singers feel bad. So stop that. The group dynamic won’t tolerate people who are in the group just because it makes them happy. The group has to be needed.

It’s an ancient dilemma in the saga of human development: Grow up, ALL of the way…learn how to do all you can learn how to do, and be all that you have the potential to be…or, be part of the group. But pick one. You can only have one of the two.

And if people pick the group, they can’t see it. They don’t want to see what they’ve given up for their happy community membership. The Faustian bargain warps your thinking, because it demands you accept terms without acknowledging their imposition or their existence.

This is why, when liberals summarize the conservative beliefs for other liberals, what spews out of their maws is such a confluence of dizzying spellbinding ignorance. It’s a blind spot within a larger blind spot. They don’t have a clue what their opposition wants, because they’ve been so diligently avoiding admitting what they themselves want. What they themselves want is to hide behind each other, to live less life, to kill off a part of themselves for sake of continued membership in their dysfunctional communities.

It’s not that extravagant of an idea, you know. “Make America Great Again” offends them.

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Symbols
Saturday, June 1st, 2024

“Symbol(s) of hate.” I’m not quoting any one particular thing. It’s the concept. Progressives see a S.O.H. and they want it covered, removed, preferably destroyed. You put up text or an image on Facebook expressing a “hateful” idea, their cops will see to it the display is as temporary as possible. Get rid of those symbols.

I mean think about it. It’s weird. Symbols are symbols — manifestations of something else. Manifestations, not causes. Do the fish make the river flow? Did we invent an alphabet so we’d have a way to read the books that were already lying around?

Does a ballot generate a voter? Hmmm…

For all the importance progressives put on symbols, they don’t understand the concept. And I notice this stuff works with supply and demand too: They think they can create a prevailing acceptance of a thing that wasn’t accepted before, by flooding us with instances of the thing so that we can’t get away from it. Minorities, women, gays, transvestites, their bathrooms, fat people in electric scooters, electric vehicles, and environmentally-friendly spoons, straws and cups. If we’re saturated with them and can’t opt out of them, we’ll learn to like ’em.

And, stuff we’ve been accepting that they don’t want us to accept. Masculinity, smoking, classy refined women who wear modest dresses, Christianity, guns, patriotism, kids who are respectful of their elders, western civilization, committed monogamous romantic relationships, being able to tell boys and girls apart. Get rid of it, make it so no one ever sees it, after awhile people will learn to loathe what they haven’t been seeing for a long time. Of course that’s the opposite of the way human nature works.

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That’s What You Get For Threatening The Establishment
Friday, May 31st, 2024

Laura Ingraham sums it all up in a one-hour video. It’s interesting that, thus far, Trump’s guilty verdict has had a far greater unifying effect upon The Right than on The Left. Isn’t this what the latter has been wanting all along?

But they’re unable to answer the question: What happens next. Trump in an orange jumpsuit is supposed to be the first step toward making everything better. Well? I’m still seeing tents under overpasses, still paying six dollars a gallon for gas. You guys got what you wanted. When do the rest of us see a benefit?

I’m not a lawyer, but there looks to be so, so much to merit an appeal. The instructions to the jury, for example, which culminate in the conviction itself on falsification of business records to conceal a crime without agreement as to what the crime is supposed to be. The crime is what makes the falsification a felony, right? And if it’s not a felony then none of this would have happened.

I’m seeing a lot of graphics on social media that look like this:

This isn’t working on any level. It’s not galvanizing people opposed to Trump, nearly as much as it’s galvanizing people who support him. As a political stunt it’s failed, since everyone voting against him now was voting against him anyway; but, people who were on the fence can see what’s wrong.

And as a function of our legal system, it’s a stink-bomb. It has nothing to do with me not liking it. No one anywhere is taking real pride in it. Or very few, anyway. What, in criminal law, got fixed here? What’s the precedent?

I’m still learning, all these years later, about what we mean when we say The Left. I notice this theme permeates everything they do: Some new fad is about to fall on all of us, which doesn’t reflect legality or morality, in any way, but it will be “real.” It will separate winners from losers, and people on The Left want to be the winners. They want to be the ones complying, and therefore not ostracized.

I saw it with the COVID hysteria. I see it in the environmentalism.

Black Lives Matter, the radical feminist movement, transgenderism, the bathroom lunacy.

“It may not be just, but it’s real, we got on the good side of it and you didn’t, sucks to be you.”

Times like this, I seriously think they don’t have any other goals in mind. They just want to be the villager watching his friends & family ushered to the city gates, or to the boxcar, leaning on his shovel — the guy who’s allowed to live his life a little while longer, because he complied.

They’re the compliant ones. Not with the written law, but with the latest fad. The fad with teeth. That’s the one objective that remains consistent across time: “Monster eat me last, because I do what I’m told.”

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Wounded, Incomplete, Toxic Females Saturate Social Media With Their Execrable Ideas About Bears
Saturday, May 4th, 2024

Internet phenomena are rather like campfire fuel: Some are like wet logs, you can sit there until your butt gets tired trying magnifying glasses, matches, Bic lighters, whatever have you, putting unlimited effort into it — and some people do! Nothing happens. They end up embarrassing themselves and tiring out their butts. Other things are like gasoline, the white variety, burning so fast that there’s no time for the flame to take to the wood and the accelerant can’t do anything but forcefully explode.

Most are in between the two extremes. This dumb bear thing is more like the latter. Match, toss, kaboom. I think it can be truthfully said, in all my Internet years, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Alone at last! I first became aware of it by way of this Daily Mail article, which leans hard on the social-activist lever, struggling to raise awareness of the perceived dangers of strange men. Women, given the choice, would rather be stranded in the woods with a bear! Oh noes! What’s wrong with the men? There must be something wrong with the men.

That’s not where the phenomenon took off, though. At least it doesn’t look that way to me.

Just like with the little boy and the Emperor With No Clothes, it took just one solitary voice to point out the obvious, and an avalanche followed: Women shouldn’t be choosing the bear, and if they are making this choice, they need to smarten up and it isn’t a male problem.

I have noticed these women who’d prefer a bear over a (strange) man, where they are sounding off in video clips and text messages, don’t have husbands or at least don’t have any worth mentioning. So okay. You ask women who haven’t yet figured out how to co-exist with men, if they would choose to co-exist with a strange man, you’ll get back a negative. I choose the bear! Yes of course. Urban chicks, compelled by circumstances to be around these “strange” men they don’t get to choose…when, being urban women, they get to choose just about everything else. I’m sure they’ve racked up lots of encounters, close & distant, with these substandard men around town, at social events, in the subway. But they haven’t been around bears. Yeah, I’d probably pick the bear too. If I were female, single, young, inexperienced…and extraordinarily un-curious. Haven’t seen a bear before. They’re probably okay.

Some have come out and said it: If I don’t harass the bear, it’ll probably leave me alone.

Oh, Honey…no. Sweetheart! Stick to the city.

Yeah the bear will probably leave you alone…IF…there’s nothing going on with its hibernation schedule, its apetite, its cubs, the weather, an imminent storm or earthquake or who knows what else in nature can agitate a bear. Or maybe it just likes the way you smell. That time of the month? There are reasons why, in agrarian constructs, for thousands of years hunting was left up to the men. Or are you wearing perfume that might smell like steak sauce in an ursine sinus cavity?

Probability plays a gender role. I’ve noticed some of the bear-choosing females are ready, willing and able to acknowledge even a strange creepy guy is unlikely to actually hurt you. Saw a man peg it at 2-3%, and the bear-choosing woman acknowledged this is in the ballpark. Whereas the bear mauling you is a near certainty. She acknowledged that too, then…stuck to her feelings. Whoa whoa whoa feelings. But I feel! So she continued to choose the bear.

At this point we need to pause and remember all women aren’t like this. So if you’re hiring or taking volunteers for a job that needs doing and it’s a critical job demanding good decision-making, you should go ahead and consider females for it. Just not females like this one.

There are lots of layers and permutations to this, but the core of what matters is neatly covered in this screenie right here:

Right-O. The wounded, incomplete, toxic females imagine this is some kind of learning experience for someone else — specifically, males, familiar & otherwise, who have failed to meet their approval. We’re to go off-line, perhaps collaborate among ourselves, and work to improve.

Sometimes the message is not so subtle:

Simp!

To a real man, two obvious questions emerge: What exactly is it we’re supposed to be fixing?

And when we get it fixed, can we have some of that sweet, sweet, mommy-approval from the females that is being so deliberately and so theatrically denied to us?

Easiest questions in the world. Nothing…and…no. It is an occasion for The Morgan Rule: If I’m gonna be accused anyway, I wanna be guilty. Toxic women who are just shells of what they’re supposed to be, don’t want us. We’re supposed to change something so they’d prefer us to bears. Well some of us are decades and decades ahead of that. We realized early on there are certain women who we don’t want wanting us, we’d rather keep our distance from them. And you’re it, sweetie.

That, too, is often displayed in Internet-land none-too-subtly:

Now, about that. Something I’m seeing over and over again, is this continuing reference to “incels” and other males who are reacting to the “I choose the bear” verdict with anger. Grrrr! And the rejoinder to the reaction to the answer to the question, is repeated cookie-cutter style, without so much as a single word of variance: “That’s why I choose the bear.” The male anger.

Anger? I myself haven’t seen any. And I’ve been looking.

I suppose, if you’re looking too, and you’re a thin-skinned drama queen seeing whatever it is in the world around you that you want to see, ready to invent it when it’s not there…some of the reactions might come sufficiently close.

Yeah…no. There’s no desire here for men to change or improve in any way. That’s the dirty little unspoken secret here. “Bear-choosing women” do not want to choose the bear. They want to be seen choosing the bear. That’s an entirely different thing.

And if they knew how they looked to normal people as they choose the bear, they probably wouldn’t want to be seen quite so fervently.

But these are not real women. Try as they might, they don’t represent all women. A lot of women have common sense about them, and understand that a bear is very likely to maul you to death for one reason or another. Bloody It will incapacitate you and start eating you, face first, while you’re still alive. This isn’t Teddy Ruxpin or Winnie The Pooh.

A real woman has either learned how to live with a man, or has the capability of learning to do that after she’s been around men. She’s not spoiling for a fight like these bints. And real women, I daresay, or at least I like to think, outnumber the bints. It’s a possibility. After all, they’re much, much quieter. Nobody anywhere is saying “I choose the man”…because it’s just common sense. Nobody says “Water is wet” either. It isn’t necessary.

Someone is missing the point. The bear girls, and the simps who align with them, seem awfully sure it’s the fellas missing the point; the fellas like me, who are reacting with snotty derision, or disagreement, or anything outside of fawning color-within-the-lines compliance and obeisance. We’re not getting it, they say. And sometimes the male simps are more outspoken about it than the bear girls:

A lot of my fellow men have really misunderstood the assignment with the whole man vs bear thing.

Your job wasn’t to come charging in to manaplain [sic] to women why they were wrong for choosing the bear.

Your job was to listen to them about WHY they would choose the bear.

And THEN to hold our fellow men accountable so that in the future women would not feel inclined to choose the bear.

That was the assignment fellas.

Job? Assignment?

Fellow men?

This is a case of the blind leading the not-blind. A real man knows some psychologically fractured cow on the Internet has no business giving him “assignments.” And he understands perfectly well that, within the Internet and outside of it, most of the disapproval aimed at males is pre-fabricated and pre-packaged. It’s there for its own sake. Someone is climbing the social ladder. It has nothing to do with what the singular or plural male entity has been doing, or failing to do. Nothing at all.

It’s all about scolding males. Scolding males is quick, easy, fun, socially rewarding and doesn’t cost anything. It’s simply what you do when you don’t know what else to say. So…hold my fellow men accountable? Against what? Women who want to choose the bear, wouldn’t choose the bear? Silly boy.

The bear-lady who “hope[s] this pisses you off” nailed it on behalf of everybody else, I think. This male reaction of pure anger, far from exceeding in supply what is spelled out in demand, is quite the reverse. The dumb bints are spoiling for a fight. I mean, it’s so obvious it’s just right out there in front of us, like the elephant in the room. Can we just admit that this motivation is there? It’s silly to deny it. You end up having to pretend, and that sort of pretending is unhealthy.

And if they’re trying to make us angry, that’s important. The narrative is that they’d prefer the bear because we’re just so unpredictable and scary, introducing unstable elements to a protagonist who would strongly prefer the stability we’re dislodging. Obviously, if that’s the narrative, there are problems with it if someone’s pissing us off on purpose. It doesn’t matter if they’re successful or not.

If there’s disharmony between the sexes, they’re the ones bringing it.

Some of them might not be aware. There is a type of thinking going on here, and it may be female-dominant but it’s likely not female-monopolized…it says the whole point of discussion is to emphasize agreements, not to reconcile disagreements. If you’re a man married or thinking of getting married, you’ve no doubt heard it said that when a woman brings a problem to you, you’re just going to confuse, bore or frustrate her if you do what comes naturally to a man — leapfrog to the possible solutions. That she just wants to vent. She doesn’t want to hear your opinion, she wants to hear her own opinion, with a male voice behind it.

Now, being a man, I don’t often have such conversations with men unless there’s a time sheet and a paycheck involved. Problem-solving on my own time, I tend to do by myself. Like Batman. If I’m collaborating with someone and no one is paying me to do it, I’m usually collaborating with a woman, and better than even odds I’m running into that ancient, ancient issue where I’m torquing off the woman because I’m offering solutions when she just wants empathy or whatever. But I daresay, based on my admittedly limited knowledge: Men don’t do this.

I do not consent We don’t script out in our heads, how the other person is supposed to validate our feelings about the problem, and then get “sad” when the other person veers off into some other direction, offering further analyses or — heaven forbid — the makings of a possible remedy. I’ve noticed even healthy, whole women who know how to co-exist with men, sometimes do this, and it seems to me to be a female thing.

But the damaged, broken, toxic “bear girls” do it even more.

They say they have experience, with the men “attacking” them and they anticipate the bear won’t be doing this. They make it sound like rape. But I know from #MeToo that a lot of people get high on making lots of things sound like rape. They made dirty jokes sound like rape. They make “He walked into the room and it made me feel uncomfortable” sound like rape.

I’m wondering: Mere disagreement, or “are you sure?” challenges, or any other behavior outside the tightly-scripted this-is-where-you-say-this-line stuff…could that be the “attack”?

I learned something about this last time I was available as a single man: A lot of women who are available as single women, are available for a reason. They don’t want, or need, a man at all. Any thoughts they want out of you, they’ll figure it out on your behalf. And then give you signals to peg down exactly what it is you’re supposed to say. What they really need and want, are stuffed animals. They simply haven’t matured to the point where they can share their lives with another thinking person with thoughts and reactions all his own. Being First World Females, and thus the most privileged demographic that has ever walked the surface of the planet, they’ve never had a reason to develop this need or the skills that would have to come with it.

No, not all women. Not even all the single women, or all of the single women I dated. Just a big chunk, out of the available ones. It was a recurring pattern I couldn’t help noticing.

I recognize the people who need to hear it, don’t want my opinion or any male opinion for that matter (except for the simps I suppose). But to me, that’s what this “I choose the bear” thing has manifested. There is a problem brewing within the female half of our population, or I should say mostly within the female half — “My choice is the final word.” She makes a choice. What more is there to be said? It’s the be-all end-all argument-ender. She’s handed down her decision as final arbiter.

But the bear will kill yo–

Omigaw!! You’re still talking! Why are you still talking? I made my choice!

Now…how did this mindset come to be so ingrained? I’m given to understand that we’ve been living, knowingly or not, in a “patriarchy.” Women have supposedly been subjugated and oppressed, just like the subjugated and oppressed classes that have been better recognized: Slaves, Jews, Jewish slaves, Catholics, Protestants, trade unionists, homosexuals, other various pariah classes…

The question that is left standing is, How does a pariah class come to take it as a given that its members should have the final word on things? To such an extent that any rejoinder to a nonsensical opinion like “I prefer the bear because it will leave me alone” is nothing more than annoying buzz?

And I’ll just leave that question there. Pull pin, walk away.

Update: Fellas…no. It is not going to work for you.

Props for trying, though.

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That’s What You Get For Threatening The EstablishmentFriday, May 31st, 2024

Wounded, Incomplete, Toxic Females Saturate Social Media With Their Execrable Ideas About BearsSaturday, May 4th, 2024

Dead Narratives
Saturday, June 21st, 2025

LGBTQWERTYUIOP+ Friendly
Saturday, May 31st, 2025

The Nerd Takes a Bow and Makes an Exit
Saturday, May 31st, 2025

Why Liberals Are More Mentally Ill Than Conservatives
Wednesday, April 30th, 2025

Maybe Now We Can Abandon This Nonsense About “Mansplaining”
Wednesday, April 30th, 2025

The Tariff Thing
Wednesday, April 30th, 2025

About That Signal Story
Monday, March 31st, 2025

That Guy Shouldn’t Be Deciding Stuff
Sunday, February 23rd, 2025

Our National Conversation
Tuesday, January 28th, 2025

My New Year’s Resolutions Are For Other People
Wednesday, January 1st, 2025

Being Blamed for Things
Friday, December 27th, 2024

Consensus as a Compass
Monday, December 9th, 2024

Twenty Years Blogging, and I’m Thinking About Work
Tuesday, November 12th, 2024

Choices About Cheating
Sunday, November 10th, 2024

He’s Been President Already
Sunday, November 10th, 2024

On Leadership
Thursday, October 31st, 2024

Men Are Replaceable
Thursday, October 31st, 2024

They Chase Their Rainbows
Thursday, October 31st, 2024

Go Ahead and Discuss Things
Monday, September 30th, 2024

Voting on Maturity Levels
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

Badass Rebels
Friday, August 16th, 2024

The Release Candidate
Saturday, August 3rd, 2024

Un-Salesman
Wednesday, July 31st, 2024

July Recap
Wednesday, July 31st, 2024

It Runs, and It Doesn’t Run
Thursday, July 4th, 2024

Memo For File CCXX
Sunday, June 30th, 2024

Cult
Wednesday, June 19th, 2024

Symbols
Saturday, June 1st, 2024

That’s What You Get For Threatening The Establishment
Friday, May 31st, 2024

Wounded, Incomplete, Toxic Females Saturate Social Media With Their Execrable Ideas About Bears
Saturday, May 4th, 2024