Archive for June, 2018

“It Is Terrible To Be A Liberal In 2018 – Which Is Awesome”

Friday, June 29th, 2018

It is Schlichter so it’s all good top to bottom…but I eventually found a way to excerpt it, with considerable difficulty.

Never have so many been so angry about so little bad news. With nothing real to complain about, they have to hype every silly little thing to the point where they are screeching “Nazi!” at you while you are trying to gnaw on a Quarter Pounder.
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Oh, there’s plenty of big talk among Dems and their media Schumer-sniffers about the onrushing blue wave, but where is this wave? Where is it hiding? Where is there any indication that the people who elected Trump are going to say “Yeah, I like the tax cuts and the booming economy and beating ISIS and my kid not having to fight street-to-street in Seoul and the crackdown on illegals and the conservative judges and Trump generally not taking of guff from liberals and their media pets, but I’ve suddenly just realized that Trump can be mean sometimes so I’ll vote for Democrat guy who wants to help Pelosi take my guns, import MS-13 into my neighborhood, and then pester me at the Arby’s.”

Where is someone saying that? Where?

Just look how unhappy the libs are. It’s all outrage, all the time. You can’t be happy if you are constantly agitated. It’s unhealthy. It makes you look like a wacko. Yet they go nuts on social media, they go nuts at awards shows, and they go nuts when conservatives are trying to scarf down some tacos. If you are always going nuts, maybe that’s an indicator that you are nuts.

He’s talking about, well, so much; where to begin. Waters. Matthews. Lemon. Moore. Well…I have to stop short of sadism. Can’t find happiness in other people being unhappy. But it pleases me greatly when unhealthy things look unhealthy, and the level of difficulty involved in pretending they’re healthy, zips upward through the skies like a hobby rocket. I mean yeah, sure, some people will rise to the challenge…but that brings us back to things looking like what they are. I find that refreshing.

I grew up in the era of “We don’t even see color, but we celebrate it anyway,” and “we need more equality and that means discriminating against the right people” and “men and women are the same, although terrible men must step back and let the wonderful women run things for a change.” The timeframe of my mortal existence has bathed me, like everyone else, in this dirty bathwater of “Pretend this all makes sense or else.” And so I get a kick out of it when deranged people actually look deranged. It’s a new thing. We haven’t really been here before, not like this.

The outrage over Justice Kennedy retiring (ad auto plays) and PDJT being “allowed” to nominate his replacement, is particularly fascinating to me. As usual, I can understand the feeling. But someone has made the calculation that it’s time to disseminate this feeling of outrage before any word has gotten out about who this nominated successor is supposed to be. Now, the last I checked, the conservative observation that conservative justices acknowledge 2+2=4, and that up is up and down is down, whereas liberal justices are compelled to find byzantine little detours around such obvious things…the above remark from me about “equality means discriminating,” people who are familiar with the Supreme Court’s decision history will find this example adequate…went unchallenged. It seems right-wing and left-wing court watchers have achieved consensus here about what the disagreement is, with regard with what justices and judges should be doing. Conservative judges acknowledge water is wet, liberal judges come up with surreal hypothetical situations too delude themselves and others into thinking it isn’t so.

And here they are, getting all flustered about the prospect of water being acknowledged, by persons in authority, as wet. One more judicial officer, failing to put in the requisite effort required to be a liberal, to maintain the necessary cognitive dissonance. There’s no specific individual we’re discussing yet, let alone a case. Just the rustic mindset of “If it’s true, for crying out loud just admit it.” The mere suggestive prospect of such a thing, makes their heads go all explodey.

And as Schlichter so artfully points out, it isn’t like they’re elevating their level of esteem in the eyes of the voting public by being this way. It’s just their nature.

Related: Had to snag this one before it drifted out of sight into the here-be-dragons turf…

Now remember. These people don’t know who the replacement Justice is going to be, let alone what cases would be voted upon by that person as opposed to Kennedy. They don’t know he or she would decide anything any differently, ever, or if so, how often.

In short, there is nothing to cheese them off here, at all, other than the ethereal concept of losing at something rather than winning it (or having a 50/50 shot at winning it). It’s pure tribalism on display.

When they get their emotions all revved up and jammed into overdrive like this, it’s easy to think they’re all hung up on the plight of whatever unfortunates are involved in the case. Which looks, to the casual lazy observer, like compassion.

Well, here there is no case. So it isn’t that. It’s just tribalism. Weepy, soap-opera-drama tribalism. No need to argue about it or wonder about it. We know.

Masculine Men Are Harder to Control

Thursday, June 28th, 2018

Salvatore DeGennaro writes in American Thinker:

An ongoing mantra of the left is that everyone is a victim, with a singular carve-out for white men. A large group of the female population has embraced this chant.

While there may be a number of grievances put forth by this movement, there also comes a theme that is particularly dangerous: the feminist attack on masculinity. This is derived not only from feminists; it comes from the left in general.

There has emerged a war on masculinity. Why? Because masculine men are harder to control under tyrannical socialism. The modern beta male, on the other hand, craves socialism. This is why the left has branded masculinity as toxic: it stands as a roadblock to their endgame.

Leftists blame, of all things, masculinity for the recent spate of sexual harassment scandals. For eons, masculinity has been considered a natural and even required trait of being male, but it is now apparently the reason for deviancy. Who knew?

The glaring problem with this argument is that the men who are typically being accused of such transgressions are anything but masculine. Sexual harassment is bipartisan; both liberal and conservative men in positions of power seem to harass women with aplomb. But where is this referenced masculinity? Harvey Weinstein? Al Franken? Louis CK? I posit that a consistent theme among most accused harassers is a complete lack of masculinity. I would go so far as to suggest that the lack of masculinity is a contributing factor to this problem.

Yes…I remember this as an early part of my wakening. As a young man, I knew some people, some were friends of mine, who were married and demonstrated, let us say, a diversity of levels of commitment to their marriages. I remember this flash of insight I had, that the philanderers were touchy-feely. “I don’t love [blank] (wife) the way I love [blank] (side-bitch).” Okay, I’ve been divorced myself since then, I get it that people get married too young and then grow apart. What I was learning back in those early days was that my upbringing, back in the pop-psych “Everyone needs to get in touch with their feelings” era, was skewed. And as I see more, the correlation becomes clearer.

Going Shakespearean with the lovey-dovey all-of-life-is-a-wedding-party bullshit, is not respectful to women. “A real man isn’t afraid to show his feelings and cry” is nonsense. Oh, there’s a tiny bit of truth in it, sure. Everyone is human and humans cry, I get that, but this tired litany has caused a lot of damage because of its excess simplicity. This little dig about not-afraid-to is just a way to invert reality, make manly things look unmanly and vice versa. You can’t flip reality like a pancake that way. And you know what, when you’re involved in something deeply personal that affects a lot of people — a death within a large family, for example — situations arise in which showing your tears really doesn’t help anyone. Aggrieved people need someone strong. They need it often, a lot more often than they need someone to help them cry. Crying’s like picking your nose. If you need to do it, you’ll find a way to get it done, you don’t need help.

But yeah. Guys who fuck around on their wives, are much more likely to be “in touch with their feelings,” I’ve noticed. The guys who are boring because they’re just thinking all the time, trying to get stuff done, tend not to fuck around because they just don’t have time. And their wives, far from being bored & pushed into living out some perverse shades-of-grey fantasy, have a tendency to stay put too. These aren’t absolutes, and my evidence is anecdotal. But it’s a matter of record that I was inclined to think some things, and circumstances forced me to re-think those…I’m likely not the only one.

Condensed version: People take their marriages about as seriously as they take life. It shouldn’t surprise us.

Masculinity leads a man to seek to better himself in many regards, while collectivism thrives on mediocrity. Collectivism in this country is sought by the lazy who don’t want to work but feel entitled to free handouts of all kinds. Unfortunately, collectivism is also touted by many who are successful, such as middle-class suburbanites who feel guilty for what they have achieved through hard work while others have not been so fortunate. Yet, when suggesting that the redistribution effort begins with their own 401(k)s, seldom will you find volunteers. Collectivism is also cheered on by certain billionaire hypocrites who made their wealth through capitalism yet now tout the wonders of socialist systems. The irony.
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The left’s war on masculinity should come as no surprise. The cultures in history that have resisted oppressive regimes in the past have celebrated masculinity rather than demeaned it.

There is an often quoted poem that sums up a society’s life cycle: “hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” The abundance of weak men in our society is ushering in those hard times, and it is celebrated by the left every step of the way.

I just love that poem, which I could find an original attribution. It’s so…true. There is a tendency in our young people not to get it, especially if they identify with these weak men who give us the hard times. They get offended. But it’s surprising how quickly you can rack up the years-on-earth necessary to see this turntable complete a rotation or two, and by then you can’t in good conscience deny it or even question it. It’s just things the way they are. Seems to be about 15 to 20 years per lap, give or take.

Memo For File CCIX

Thursday, June 28th, 2018

Practical thinking, broadly, is divided into two phases. You figure out what’s going on based on the evidence you manage to collect or that finds its way to you; then, you figure out what to do (or avoid doing) about it.

Maturity means you noodle these things out based on the expected outcome. Soon after we’re born, we have what it takes to recognize we need to get those questions answered, and a little while after that we develop the methods for answering them. The obstacle to maturity is that, in childhood, “outcome” is indistinguishable from “gratification of self.”

It is only in the later years that a conflict arises: Should I win more privileges for myself, or my peer group, or elevate the social stature of myself & my peer group; or, should I pursue an agenda (and evaluate the success and failures of previous efforts) based on concern about the eventual outcome? See, a baby bawling for a tit in his mouth doesn’t have to worry about that conflict. In his world it’s all the same.

From my Hello Kitty of Blogging page.

The Next Thing to Destory: Toy Guns

Thursday, June 14th, 2018

UK Independent:

Prince George was pictured playing alongside Princess Charlotte and The Duchess of Cambridge yesterday, but not everyone was happy about the four-year-old’s choice of toy – a pretend gun.

The Duke of Cambridge was playing in the Maserati Royal Charity Polo Trophy at Beaufort Polo Club in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, on Sunday afternoon.

And, while Prince William took part, Kate and their children – minus Prince Louis – had fun in the sun.

Images from the event captured Prince George playing with a toy gun, knife and handcuffs…
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…the images have subsequently sparked a debate on Twitter with many calling the decision to let Prince George play with a toy gun “disappointing.”

“Sad to see George playing with a gun when the whole country has a gun/knife crime situation,” one person wrote.
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Another added: “This isn’t okay anymore… My American side here, biased maybe b/c of everyday #gunviolence in USA but my British side agrees.

“No child in this day and age should look at any gun as a fun toy. This looks far too real.”

Via The Daily Gator, via Pirate’s Cove.

Like many who are going to be reading this, I think this is just fine; in fact, I take some level of personal offense against the whole thing, since playing with toy guns was a normal part of childhood back when I was in it. So since I’m on the normal side of this disagreement, let me take a closer look at the abnormal. We have: People who are genuinely concerned about the gun violence problem, and think this objection of theirs might have something to do with stopping it, or slowing it. And then there are cultural-reformers who wish to manhandle the borders of the Overton Window, dictating to the rest of us what we are to perceive as mainstream and what we are to regard as fringe-kooky. They’d like to bulldoze anything gun-related into the gutter…and it isn’t about stopping or slowing violence.

For them, the world’s children are just yards on a battlefield, in the midst of a protracted culture war. The generations-long, cold civil war.

This isn’t even about guns. For a child that age, guns have nothing to do with danger, or violence — much of the fascination has to do with remote control. I can stand over here, and change the state of that object, clear over there. This might be a curious thing for someone to bring up about it, but we should be discussing that aspect of it more often because far from being merely harmless, that’s an important part of a child’s development. Children have a need to become accustomed to achieving direct effect on the world around them; getting comfortable with the idea of engaging action, as a leader, on an individual level, and seeing that action translated into a consequence. Later on they can become acquainted with the concept of irreversible investments, and point-of-commitment. What you do today, you cannot undo tomorrow. From that, comes the understanding of responsibility.

Now some of these gun-grabbing helicopter-moms mean well, but starving kids from having these experiences is not the right way to go. It is a sort of neglect taking place. And it’s being encouraged from several different levels in our evolving, global society, in such a way that it seems to me some of the proponents must be aware. I don’t like to think in terms of “conspiracies,” but there are many conspiracy-ingredients here. There is motivation. Political agendas that, for any aspiration of success, require a ballooning of that sorry segment of the populace suffering from this atrophy. The sad sacks who know how to identify problems, but can’t comprehend how they, as individuals, could make anything better through their direct action, and so must take to the streets to do something called “protest.” About everything.

No, I’m not saying use guns to solve problems currently addressed through peaceful-protests. Did I say that? No. My point is, at this age the brain is all tied up in a frenzy, developing itself. We talk so much about empowering kids, elevating their “sense of self esteem” and so forth. This is where kids learn about thinking-globally-acting-locally, as the saying goes. How to do stuff for themselves. How not to become complaining bitter bitches about every little thing, waiting for some magical Deus ex Machina to come along and make it all better. You know…how not to be that guy that, when you’re planning a hiking or camping trip, you want to leave this squealing little whiner behind, or lie to him about which trailhead or what date. It is the first step to becoming a productive citizen, ready to live a full, rich life.

We place such a premium value these days on outrage. Well, I’m personally “outraged,” to a very limited extent, by the question. Perhaps “bored” is a more accurate term. But I see some danger in it too.