House of Eratosthenes

We have to talk about the women. Appropriate for now, I suppose, since the National Women’s History Project has successfully lobbied Congress to recognize March as Women’s History Month.

One of the biggest dangers to the continuance of civilization as we know it, right now, is the fusion between militant left-wing political activists, and the casual observers. The “moderates,” the “big middle,” decent, good-hearted people who don’t pay close attention to politics but know when they do & do not agree with something. Our salvation lies in driving a wedge between those two sides. Which sounds sinister, but is actually the correct mission statement. Work at it without apology where you can. The political left shouldn’t even come into contact with decent people, let alone be able to energize them or to recruit from them. They don’t deserve them. They’re not worthy.

Issues having to do with female empowerment, and female safety, have a mesmerizing effect upon these decent and good-hearted people. Which I suppose is only to be expected. It’s part of the definition. Civilization, as I wrote somewhere lately, must have begun with motherhood. At least, one-third of it, the part that has to do with “I’m not going to conk you over the head and take your stuff because I don’t want you or somebody else to do that to me.” It must have begun with this implied contract having a measurable effect on the behavior of the strong man who would otherwise be acting like a brute, and this must have begun with “I can go out from my cave and conk other people over the head, but in order to do that I have to leave someone behind, in the cave.” And that must have been the mom. Of course I wasn’t there to see it happen or anything, but process of elimination tells me it must be so, and I see it hard-wired into the behavior of people. The very idea of a woman, left defenseless and at the mercy of a strong male who wishes her harm, galvanizes people. People who just got done snickering at some poor weak husband who must endure physical beatings from his wife and can’t do anything about it. The same situation, with the roles reversed, horrifies them. Suddenly it isn’t funny, and not only that, they’re energized into a something-must-be-done state. And they don’t show this bias just to earn approval from others, it’s something internal.

Of course, the quickest and most effective way to get something done about that, is to get a gun into that woman’s hands and train her to properly maintain and use it. So perhaps it’s merely an oversight on the part of the NWHP that in the roll of 2018 honorees I’m seeing abortion activists, gay-rights activists, illegal-alien sympathizers, et al…but I’m not finding any gun-rights activists. But the frosting on the cake is that they went with that awful theme. “Nevertheless, She Persisted: Honoring Women Who Fight All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.” What were the proceedings like, as they pondered this, I wonder. Oh to be a fly on the wall. And what about these bombastic buzzwords making reference to physical confrontations? Fight. Win. Refuse. Power. Action. “…and of believing that meaningful and lasting change is possible in our democratic society.” Might I suggest, if you’re having trouble getting that last point circulated, maybe skip a few of these subliminal implications that interested women must engage in fisticuffs in order not to be interrupted by people who aren’t women?

Hold All These Feelz Our evolving society has become quite interested in hearing what women have to say, quite enamored with finding out what women have to say. It is a society that, as Bill Maher once said during his very rare and brief interludes of saying sensible things that are true, is “based on making women nod.” Women are not getting interrupted, en masse, by ritual. If anything, it’s the men who are being subjected to that. “Nevertheless she persisted” has its own Wikipedia entry, which happens to be accurate, so there’s no excuse for anyone to lumber onward in ignorance of the back-story. The phrase is in “honor” of dishonorable Senator Elizabeth Warren, who broke the rules and wouldn’t shut her dumb mouth when a male Senator would have been obliged to do exactly that or else face even more stringent consequences. It has become a rallying cry for malcontents. It has nothing whatsoever to do with making “meaningful and lasting change…in our democratic society.” Nothing at all. It is the opposite of that. It is the elevation of one’s own feelz, above the rules that are obligatory upon and effectively constraining all others.

Was there no one to make mention of this?

Best case scenario: The Project attracting women and womens’-activists from all sorts of different walks of life, someone was there to point out the dichotomy and the problems that it creates, and a reasoned deliberation followed which was short or long, but in either case the saner voices got outvoted and the Project made this daffy decision. Worst case scenario: The Project does not attract interested persons from any diverse range of backgrounds, it’s just a left-wing echo chamber and no one saw anything wrong with it at all. This would mean, the Project does not have what it takes to distinguish an egalitarian society from the destructive forces that would dismantle it from within, and it’s up to the rest of us to make & act on that distinction on their behalf. You seek to effect change in a “democratic society” by working according to that society’s rules? Then follow the rules! And show that someone on the outside doesn’t have to explain such an obvious thing to you.

I take deep umbrage against, and I recommend zero tolerance for, this continuing repeated-chorus that suffragists “fought for” and “won” the right to vote. The implication, believed by many young women of today and without any reservations at all, is that women had zero influence — “women were property” and “had no power,” you’ll hear and see many of them say. And then there was this battle between the invading but oppressed people, the women, against the defending but bullying men, and with this battle “won” the tables were turned. It’s a fairy tale for mental midgets, pieced together for consumption by those who are lacking in comprehension of the concept of time. Sometime on or about this date, somewhere around the ratification of the nineteenth amendment, the battle was decisively ended and women “won the right to vote.” But with that in our rear view mirror by a margin of just coming up on a hundred years, the thing for us to do today is play this endless-circle game of CALWWNTY (Come A Long Way, We’re Not There Yet). Which means: More fighting.

This is not achieving equality. This is achieving conflict. There’s a difference.

Try this. Listen to all these historical accounts of the decades long “battle” for women to “win” the right to vote, and decide for yourself, rationally, logically, if the metaphor really does belong there. And presume, as a default assumption that holds until it is falsified, that it does not. See how many matches remain. Closest you get is when Susan B. Anthony got herself arrested for trying to vote — when the established rules said she wasn’t eligible to do so, and far from being a tackle followed by a brawl in the streets, was actually weeks afterward with a trial beginning the following January. “Fighting” had very little to do with this, it was a confrontation, of the sort we see across a great many issues, rather constantly, today. You’ll notice the rest of it is also just doing what we do in politics all the time. Organizing. Arguing. Making the pitch. And yeah, some confronting too. But the real problem with this fighting-language is this: You don’t have a pitched battle to get a constitutional amendment passed. Sorry, you just don’t. It’s a fact. Three-quarters of the states have to ratify the amendment, through their respective legislatures, after two-thirds of both houses of Congress approve it. That’s how it’s done. It’s right there in Article V of the Constitution.

This is fact. You don’t get to be a hardy little band of rebels taking on a behemoth, with no one else on your side, and then get your amendment passed. You need senators and you need representatives. You need people in state legislators, seeing things your way, or who can be compelled to see things your way.

That’s a lot of dudes. Agreeing. Saying yes. Not fighting.

Women got the right to vote, after men gave it to them. This is not language that’s quite as romantic as fighting and battling and winning and so forth, but…well, there it is. That’s what happened. Women encountered expectations that they should sit down & shut up, or enjoy representation in government but only through their husbands, and organized, put together an argument, presented it, and after a time the men said “Hmm, yeah that makes sense” and did the right thing. With some disagreements and arguing and dissent and maybe even some withholding-of-sex and some beatings too, but the same is true of everything else we decide.

No matter how you cut it, it isn’t logical to present an argument of “Women had no influence whatsoever, and so they used this influence they did not have to get the influence they did not have yet that no one else wanted them to have.”

Now, you want some really harsh truth? Celebrations of womens’ suffrage, if they’re sincere, should begin with thanks to the men of yesteryear who did the right thing, enfranchising women. It would tick off a lot of people, but it would be honest. And by working so hard to avoid ticking of those people, who I would argue lust after the chance of being perpetually ticked off anyway, the rest of us gain nothing and we come no closer to healing any rifts that remain, we only widen them. And this is wrong.

“Nevertheless, she persisted…” Ah, yes. It’s one of the litanies of the cult’s rituals. When she’s grandly proclaiming, she’s a Senator; when she’s being held to Senatorial standards, whoooooooa there buster, she’s a lady, how dare you! You’ll recall that the same thing happened when Madame “Most Accomplished Woman in Politics” Secretary Clinton was actually required to answer for some of those accomplishments before Congress, and thousands stampeded each other to be the first to decry the shabby mean shabbiness of the meanies for trying such a thing. And lately, the entire shebang has been turned up to a crescendo regarding the Marjory Stoneman Douglas kids – they’re brave activists when they’re mouthing the same stupid/false/refuted nonsense about guns, but they’re scared, mourning children when anyone tries to address that nonsense.

I think it was Screwtape who said that in the end, both silence and music must be drowned out by mere Noise, “the grand dynamism,” and that Hell was filled end-to-end with nothing but Noise. Vonnegut channeled a bit of Lewis (and Screwtape’s Hell) in “Harrison Bergeron,” with geniuses having their trains of thought abruptly derailed by earsplitting cacophony shot into their ears at irregular intervals. And with their usual uncanny touch, the modern Left is doing just this, shouting out either discussion or sober contemplation with soundbites, narratives, indignation, violence – anything except what would be actually useful to anyone.
- nightfly | 03/29/2018 @ 10:03
Maybe I’m looking at it with rose-colored glasses, but my vision is that society triumphs over this when the tired old method loses its punch — as, and this is my only reason for maintaining optimism, consistently practiced methods with no alternatives always do.

At some point, people find themselves obliged to drive long distances with a busted radio and no way to get any tunes playing, and they discover…oh this is actually quite pleasant. And sooner or later everyone starts to wonder what kind of superior decision-making they can manage to accomplish, and what would be the benefits, without noise, and more & more of them start to do something about it. And then we all become a bit more aware of what was done to us before we did it back.

That’s my hope, anyway.
- mkfreeberg | 03/31/2018 @ 10:02

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Let’s Call it “Men Are Not the Enemy” MonthSaturday, March 24th, 2018

Let’s Call it “Men Are Not the Enemy” Month
Saturday, March 24th, 2018