When Excellence Is Expected

Posted on | October 6, 2015 | 58 Comments

Today is my 56th birthday and I don’t intend to spend it arguing online with a Swedish idiot who popped up on Twitter to declare: “The right has become pro-rape. White boys can’t attract women naturally, have to resort to force to enter the gene pool.” To which I replied:

1. You’re insane.
2. I’m a married father of six. You?

As Vox Day says, “SJWs always project,” and there was an obvious projection (to say nothing of the intended insult) in this ridiculous suggestion that I, or any of my numerous progeny, would “have to resort to force to enter the gene pool.”

Our six kids (L-R) Emerson, 14, Kennedy, 26, Reagan, 12, Jim and Bob, 22, Jefferson 16 (at Jim's wedding). pic.twitter.com/8VelSuvO6N

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) September 19, 2015

Twin sons Bob and James, 22, at James's wedding. pic.twitter.com/cTFEAmk4ZK

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) September 19, 2015

A proprietary sense of patriarchal pride in our offspring is the product of a sense that we are custodians of a worthy inheritance. A proper knowledge of our ancestry and a grateful appreciation of our own particular family gives rise to a dutiful concern to care for our children. The other day, discussing with my 12-year-old daughter Reagan her career ambitions, I made the point that, among my various accomplishments, I consider fatherhood foremost. After all, I explained, a “career” is simply what we do to pay the bills; the real substance of life, the purpose of all our labor, is to provide for our family. It is easy to lose sight of this reality when we are young and dreaming infinite dreams, but it is also easy to forget this as grown-ups immersed in the day-to-day pursuit of success or, more practically, just trying to pay the bills.

“To live for the moment is the prevailing passion — to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity. We are fast losing the sense of historical continuity, the sense of belonging to a succession of generations originating in the past and stretching into the future. . . .
“Narcissism emerges as the typical form of character structure in a society that has lost interest in the future.”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

My own father worked 37 years at the Lockheed plant in Marietta, Georgia, which was the way he paid for his own American Dream — a home of his own where he raised three sons in respectable middle-class circumstances. Having grown up on a farm in Alabama during the Great Depression, my father always told his sons we didn’t know how good we had it and of course he was right. Kids who grew up in middle-class America during the post-WWII boom had little sense of their lives as the product of decades of hard work by their parents and grandparents. Your Dad got up early and went to his job, your Mom got you off to school and then went to her job, and because everybody around you was living a variation of the same kind of life, it did not occur to you how remarkably good your life was, nor did you have any real appreciation of the hard work and sacrifice necessary to provide you with this life.

The Ordinary American — the guy who goes to work every day to pay the bills for his family — is too little appreciated in an era when the media promotes the idea that celebrities and politicians are the only important people. CNN today is telling me the latest about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, while the people suffering from floods in South Carolina are just nameless victims. Meanwhile, somewhere in Sweden, a leftist feels an overwhelming urge to lecture me on Twitter about “white boys” who “can’t attract women naturally.”

Not my problem.

Nor is this a problem for my four sons. The McCain “gene pool” is doing just fine, thank you very much, but what about this guy in Sweden? Has he attracted any women, “naturally” or otherwise? Does he have any sons or daughters yet? If not, why not? “SJWs always project,” and his arrogant presumption about the problems of others is most likely an externalized representation of the knowledge of his own dim prospects for reproductive success. “The personal is political,” you see, but the Left’s ideological agenda — a grandiose rationalization of their own narrow personal grievances against “society” — is presented to us by the media as if we should care as much about other people’s problems as we care about our own problems. Somewhere there’s a “transgender” weirdo whose feelings are hurt, and we’re all supposed to stop whatever it is we’re doing to exude emotional sympathy for this social injustice.

Not my problem.

If your kid grows up to be a transgender weirdo, that’s your problem, and I refuse to let you make it my problem. You never asked me for any child-rearing advice, and I doubt you would have listened if I volunteered my advice, so your weirdo kid will just have to deal with whatever problems he, she or it has as an adult weirdo.

This morning, my wife and I were talking about how excellent our children are. Our oldest three (a daughter now 26 and twin sons, now 23) gave us relatively few problems as teenagers and are now responsible, successful adults, and the younger three (boys 16 and 14, and a girl, 12) are all behaving themselves quite well.

“Don’t be a weirdo” — I actually say that to my kids from time to time, usually after encountering some bizarre madness on feminist Tumblr, where bizarre madness proliferates. My research into radical feminism has produced an odd disconnect between (a) the strange people with strange ideas I confront in my research, and (b) the sane, normal reality of the actual human beings around me. My teenagers have become accustomed to me occasionally wandering into their room to issue warnings about Things Not to Do, i.e., “Don’t be a psycho killer.”

Ian Mercer apparently never gave his weirdo son that advice:

The father of the Roseburg, Oregon, shooter said he doesn’t know where his son got his weapons, and he declined to comment much on his son’s mental state, but he was quick to say what he thought was to blame in the deadly college attack: Guns.
Ian Mercer, during an interview outside his California home Saturday, told CNN that he didn’t know his son had a single gun, let alone 13. He asked, “How on earth could he compile 13 guns? How could that happen?”
Mercer’s son, Chris Harper-Mercer, staged an attack at Umpqua Community College, killing nine people and injuring nine others Thursday. . . .
Other countries don’t see mass shootings at the same clip that the United States does, he said, asserting, “Somebody has to ask the question: How is it so easy to get all these guns?”
His condemnation of guns grew stronger as the interview went on, and he closed his remarks on the subject with a call for change.
“It has to change. How can it not? Even people that believe in the right to bear arms, what right do you have to take people’s lives? That’s what guns are, the killers. Simple as that. Simple as that. It’s black and white. What do you want a gun for?”

Way to avoid personal responsibility, Psycho Killer Dad. Hey, divorce your wife, re-marry and don’t worry about that kid from your first marriage, because what could possibly go wrong?

The gunman who executed nine people at an Oregon community college before killing himself ranted in a manifesto he left behind about not having a girlfriend and thinking everyone else was “crazy,” a law enforcement official said Monday.
The official also said the mother of 26-year-old gunman Christopher Harper-Mercer has told investigators he was struggling with some mental health issues. . . .
Harper-Mercer complained in the manifesto about not having a girlfriend, and he seemed to feel like he was very rational while others around him were not, the official said.
He wrote something to the effect of: “Other people think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I’m the sane one,” the official said. The manifesto was a couple of pages long.

I’ll add Never Write a “Manifesto” to my kids’ list of Things Not to Do.

In a world gone mad, being happy and successful requires a process of subtraction, a list of dangerous craziness to avoid. This is why I find myself telling my kids things like, “Don’t become a heroin addict.” As obvious as that advice may seem, apparently a lot of kids never heard it, because OD’ing on heroin is now the leading cause of accidental death in Ohio, surpassing traffic fatalities. So here’s your fatherly advice, kids: “Always wear your seatbelt, don’t text while driving, be careful when driving at night or in the rain and, by the way, heroin is a bad drug. Also, never go on mass-murder rampage and don’t be a transgender weirdo.”

Young people can think of life as a list of potential outcomes and simply by subtracting the obviously bad stuff –psycho killer, heroin addict, “Caitlyn” Jenner — manage to live a decent and respectable life. You may never win any awards, become famous or make a million dollars, but at least you didn’t OD on heroin, murder nine people or embarrass the family by marrying a Kardashian and appearing on a magazine cover as a 65-year-old transvestite. (Of course, Never Marry a Kardashian is on my kids’ list of Things Not to Do.) People nowadays become wealthy celebrities for doing stuff that, once upon a time, would have gotten them locked up in a lunatic asylum, and yet people are surprised when a weirdo who can’t even get a girlfriend decides to become famous by shooting up a community college. This kind of Loser-Goes-Out-in-a-Blaze-of-Glory scenario keeps happening, and the media tell us to blame guns, because obviously we can’t blame the media.

Well, that was all a long digression, another self-indulgent detour down a sidetrack, but hey, it’s my birthday. Indulge me.

See, this Swedish SJW on Twitter thinks that I am ignorant, and in need of his enlightenment, so he’s got to lecture me about social problems that I’m obviously too stupid to understand, despite the fact that (a) I’m an award-winning journalist and author, and (b) he’s just an SJW troll with a Twitter account. Oh, and I almost forgot to add (c) I’ve raised six kids, none of whom have become heroin addicts or psycho killers.

Also, none of my kids have married a Kardashian — yet.

So far, so good, and we hope to keep it that way.

The Swedish troll expanded on his theory — “White boys . . . have to resort to force to enter the gene pool” — by adding: “I was talking about the new generation of men, where many can’t compete when women are financially independent.”

Oh, what a bundle of presumption he packs into that single tweet, beginning with the presumption of my ignorance. Here I am with Lionel Tiger’s book The Decline of Males on my desk, as also Helen Smith’s book Men on Strike and yet, the troll evidently presumes, I know nothing about the various social and economic forces influencing demographics in the 21st century. Let’s start with this: Do trends make people or do people make trends?” The modern conception of History with a capital-H, a transcendent force beyond human control that renders the ordinary individual a helpless victim of an impersonal trend, must be recognized as a philosophical error if we are not to sink into despair.

“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that; no ordinary man could be such a fool.”
— George Orwell, 1945

Does the Swedish troll suppose my life is a random accident? Am I not able to make conscious decisions? Can I not examine the current trend (whatever it might be), and plot my own course within the available alternatives? My parents didn’t raise me to believe I was helpless, and certainly I would never want my children to believe their lives are a random accident. Our lives have meaning and purpose. The choices we make — our actions as individuals — have consequences for our own lives and for the lives of others. Having lived quite carelessly in my youth, I consider my rather miraculous survival must have served a purpose, if only to equip me to warn young people against careless living.

With this in mind, then, what about “the new generation of men, where many can’t compete when women are financially independent”? Let us ask, with whom do these men compete? Or, we may ask, how is it that “women are financially independent,” yet “the new generation of men” are non-competitive? Exactly who are these white boys who “can’t attract women naturally”? Aren’t these decadent weaklings the products of a degenerate secularized culture that tells them their lives have no meaning or purpose, because History with a capital-H is an omnipotent force independent of their own choices and actions? Isn’t it the case that “the new generation of men” have been taught that there is no God, and have instead been taught a materialistic worldview void of moral purpse or spiritual meaning? And is it not an ironic consequence of these atheistic ideas — not just History with a capital-H, but also Progress with a capital-P and Science with a capital-S — is that the allegedly enlightened people who embraced Darwinian evolution as Truth with a capital-T are locked into a downward spiral of demographic decline? They claim to be superior, yet are evidently unfit for the survival of the fittest.

Losers lose. Winners win. This is not new. You need to get out more. Stop living in your head. @Riktigheten @eshire https://t.co/XAmerRZbwO

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) October 6, 2015

The Swedish troll continued his Twitter lecture: “Now that women can have education and careers, it appears there is an excess of men,” and “Now that men no longer have exclusive access to the working world, a lot of young men no longer have appeal.”

To which I repeat: Not my problem.

If it is true that “there is an excess of men,” or that “a lot of young men no longer have appeal,” this is a problem for the failures, the scrubs, the guys who can’t compete — and also, in similar measure, for the women who don’t measure up to the standards necessary to attract a winner. Lecture me all you want about “financially independent women,” Mister Swedish Troll, but I have two eyes and a brain, and I know how miserable and lonely a lot of those women actually are. Despite all their talk about “empowerment,” many such women are psychological cripples who rely on antidepressant medications just to make it through the day. All this Progress with a capital-P and Equality with a capital-E has not been achieved without a price, and it is lonely women who are paying that price — liberated to become a Crazy Cat Lady!

What every Women's Studies major should get on her first day of classes. pic.twitter.com/gb7sWWft98 @p_w_sterne

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) August 23, 2014

Stay away from crazy women, I tell my sons. If a woman starts babbling lunatic gibberish about the patriarchy and misogyny and oppression, this is your cue to walk away, boys. “Hunt where the ducks are,” as the old saying goes, and it’s foolish to waste your time talking to angry neurotic women, when there are so many happy normal women who enjoy a bit of the old patriarchal oppression, IYKWIMAITYD.

Dancing with Mrs. McCain at our son's wedding. pic.twitter.com/vJWEqw9Hh0

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) September 19, 2015

Winners find a way to win, whatever the challenges may be.

Enduring hardship, overcoming obstacles, the survivor survives, and every day of survival is a victory unto itself. Today I have survived 56 years, and have already lived to see two grandsons born. My children are miracles, not accidents, and today when my daughter Reagan was leaving for school I told her, “Be excellent all day long.”

Don’t just be good. Be excellent. Excellence is expected.

Today is a very happy birthday. Hit the freaking tip jar.

 

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