The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ace of Spades Goes Full-On Populist?

Posted on | December 9, 2015 | 269 Comments

Because I’ve been up to my ears in radical feminism for the past year, I haven’t monitored the day-to-day developments of the GOP presidential primary campaign the way I did during the 2012 cycle. As a result, I am unaware (and really, do not care) which of my blogger friends are supporting which candidate. My attitude for the 2016 campaign can be summarized in three words: Anybody But Clinton. After my (ultimately futile) hyper-involvement in the 2012 campaign, I simply do not want to expend mental or emotional energy worrying about who the Republicans nominate. Others do not have that attitude, however, which brings us to Ace of Spades discussing the latest Donald Trump controversy:

Laura Ingraham: GOP will rip itself apart at convention to avoid nominating Trump.
Krauthammer: Trump’s proposal is “deeply bigoted,” “indefensible.”
Josh Earnest: Trump’s proposal consigns him for the new and improved “Wrong side of history,” which is now “the dustbin of history.” . . .
Ingraham points out that Trump’s proposal comes in a particular context: When the establishments of both parties already want to take him out, and are willing to seize on whatever cudgel is at hand to do so.
They’re not going to beat him this way.
The establishment’s yelling about everything has gone from tedious to exhausting to infuriating.

Read the whole thing. I had noticed, occasionally, Ace’s increasing frustration with the GOP establishment the past year or so, but I guess I underestimated the intensity of his frustration, or his seriousness about the immigration problem. Knowing Ace, he’s the last guy I would expect to dive off into Pat Buchanan/Peter Brimelow/John Derbyshire paleoconservative-style populism which I’m not saying he has, but I think he definitely now understands the teeth-grinding fury the Old Right felt toward the GOP’s constant compromising with liberalism. Insofar as any conservative is serious about defeating the Left, I think, he must eventually experience that kind of reaction. The alternative is to become an unprincipled centrist hack like Steve Schmidt or Nicolle Wallace.

Honestly, I’ve got a Zen-like serenity about the Trump phenomenon. The prospect of Trump going thermonuclear and running as an independent is the worst-case scenario, and so what? He will do it or he won’t. Republicans who want to stop Trump from winning the GOP nomination have to reckon with that possibility, and let them worry about it.

Not my problem.

If Ace is saying “burn it down,” there may be no alternative. It is not Trump’s fault that the GOP establishment is impotent. It’s not Ace’s fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not your fault. That arrogant fat-faced bastard Karl Rove? Yeah, I’m willing to blame it all on him, because why not? Populism needs a scapegoat and he’ll do. So if everything goes sideways between now and November 2016, and Hillary Clinton is elected because Trump went third-party and got 34% of the vote . . . ?

Burn it down, I say, and blame it all on Karl.




 

Category: Ace of Spades, Election, Republicans

Questioning Feminist Authority: Cult Ideology and Mind Control Tactics

Posted on | December 8, 2015 | 40 Comments

“Mind control (also known as ‘brainwashing,’ ‘coercive persuasion,’ and ‘thought reform’) refers to a process in which a group or individual systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s).”
— Michael D. Langone, “Cults and Mind Control”

She is a 19-year-old “dysphoric female” who is a “gender-critical . . . sex-critical, anti-natalist” feminist and identifies as a “transman.” If you met someone in real life who described herself that way, you might wonder if she was out on an overnight pass from the psychiatric ward.

Feminist Tumblr bears little resemblance to real life, however. On her blog, the dysphoric teenage feminist presumes the expertise to deliver her diagnosis of everything that is wrong with society and the normal people who live in it:

Female critique of men and masculinity and male violence and misogyny is about liberation and safety.
Male critique of feminism is about control and domination and validation and entitlement.
See the difference?

Ideological justification of a self-serving double standard, whereby feminists relentlessly criticize men while exempting themselves from any criticism at all, is nowadays so widely accepted that it is seldom even noticed, much less subjected to skeptical scrutiny. Are the problems of “male violence and misogyny” so pervasive as to justify a “critique of men and masculinity,” per se? If a man is non-violent and pleads not guilty to the accusation of “misogyny” (i.e., woman-hating), can he be permitted to object to this categorical condemnation of masculinity?

Well, no, says our dysphoric teenage expert, because any male who criticizes feminism is exercising “control and domination and validation and entitlement.” Feminism accuses all men of oppressing women and, if a man endeavors to defend himself against this accusation, his defense is cited as proof of his guilt. The definition of “misogynist” is a male who criticizes feminism, and any man who defends himself is condemned as an opponent of women’s “liberation and safety.”

This is a rhetorical tactic called “kafkatrapping”:

[Kafkatrapping] is a form of argument that, reduced to essence, runs like this: “Your refusal to acknowledge that you are guilty of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression…} confirms that you are guilty of {sin, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppression…}.” . . .
Real crimes — actual transgressions against flesh-and-blood individuals — are generally not specified. The aim of the kafkatrap is to produce a kind of free-floating guilt in the subject, a conviction of sinfulness that can be manipulated by the operator to make the subject say and do things that are convenient to the operator’s personal, political, or religious goals. Ideally, the subject will then internalize these demands, and then become complicit in the kafkatrapping of others.

The success of kafkatrapping relies on our natural instinct to respond to accusations of bad faith (mala fides) by denying the accusation, rather than questioning the authority of the accuser.

What qualifies this person to stand in judgment of others as an arbiter of public morality? Why do they presume themselves authorized to act as a sort of prosecuting attorney, arraigning you on a charge of sexism, homophobia or whatever, because you said something they deemed “offensive”? If you know you are unjustly accused, then the real issue is the motive of your accuser. Who is this person? What motivates them to seek out “racism” and other species of Thought Crime? Are you dealing with an aspiring social justice warrior (SJW) who hopes to pursue a full-time career as an activist? Is it not true that the SJW gains publicity and enhanced status by pointing the accusatory finger at others?

‘The Agents of Our Oppression’

Questioning the authority of the accuser in such a situation usually throws them off-balance, because they take it for granted that you, as the accused, will be be overwhelmed by a sense of “free-floating guilt.” The finger-pointing SJW operates in an echo-chamber environment where no one questions the necessity of perpetual crusades against Thought Crime: “Rape culture”! “White privilege”! “Male entitlement”! Ridding society of such categorical evils is the raison d’être of social justice warriors, and it never occurs to them that these categories can be critically interrogated. Exactly what does the feminist mean, for example, when she denounces the “objectification” of women? Isn’t it fair to say that this is yet another bit of jargon by which feminism generally condemns the normal behaviors and attitudes of heterosexual males? Isn’t “objectification” merely a pejorative term for the normal man’s admiration of female beauty? Why is the feminist so offended by this? Perhaps she would be happy if we sought to better understand her complaints by engaging in a study of feminist theory.

“Women are an oppressed class. . . . We identify the agents of our oppression as men.”
— Redstockings Manifesto, 1969

“Heterosexuality is the institution that creates, maintains, and supports men’s power. . . . And heterosexuality has its ramifications at all levels of society; it is the source of all other oppressions.
“Heterosexuality is the pivot on which men have based the norm and created the origin and measure by which all relationships are structured. . . . Men, through heterosexuality, have devised their own concept and thereby constructed a system that generates all oppressions.”
— Ariane Brunet and Louise Turcotte, “Separatism and Radicalism,” in For Lesbians Only: A Separatist Anthology, edited by Sarah Lucia-Hoagland and Julie Penelope (1988)

“Heterosexism is maintained by the illusion that heterosexuality is the norm.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

“Only when we recognize that ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ are made-up categories, invented to control human beings and violently imposed, can we truly understand the nature of sexism. . . .
“Questioning gender . . . is an essential part of the feminism that has sustained me through two decades of personal and political struggle.”
— Laurie Penny, “How to Be a Genderqueer Feminist,” 2015

It is possible to trace the “genderqueer” feminism of Laurie Penny directly back to its ideological origins in the radical Women’s Liberation Movement that emerged in the late 1960s. The movement’s first public protest, in September 1968, was against the Miss America pageant. Beauty pageant contestants “epitomize the roles we are all forced to play as women,” feminists declared, denouncing the way “women in our society [are] forced daily to compete for male approval, enslaved by ludicrous ‘beauty’ standards we ourselves are conditioned to take seriously.” The very idea that women should desire “male approval” is offensive to feminists, who consider themselves “enslaved” by “beauty standards” enforced by men. Such remarkable claims are as astonishing to sane people now as they were in 1968, but no one has ever accused feminists of being sane people, and the trajectory of their radical madness is now a matter of history. Within a year, Shulamith Firestone and her comrades had formed the Redstockings collective as a sort of revolutionary vanguard, only to see themselves eclipsed by an even more radical critique of women’s status as an “oppressed class.” In January 1970, a group calling itself “Radicalesbians” disrupted a feminist conference in New York (see “The Long Shadow of the Lavender Menace”) and within a year, Charlotte Bunch had formed the D.C.-based lesbian collective known as The Furies. The radical view that women are oppressed by heterosexuality, per se, has become mainstream within the feminist movement primarily due to the influence of lesbian professors in the Feminist-Industrial Complex of academic Women’s Studies programs. The impressionable young student reading a textbook like Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (edited by two professors at Oregon State University) probably doesn’t even blink at the editors’ claim that it is an “illusion” to believe heterosexuality is normal. When Ariane Brunet and Louise Turcotte — members of a tiny French-Canadian collective called Amazones d’Hier, Lesbiennes d’Aujourd’hui (Amazons of Yesterday, Lesbians of Today) — issued their condemnation of heterosexuality as an “institution” of male supremacy, “a system that generates all oppressions,” they were considered part of an extremist fringe. Now this extremism is part of the university curriculum, and anyone who questions it is apt to be accused of “homophobia.”

Even the most basic distinctions between men and women are now considered oppressive. Laurie Penny urges us to “recognize that ‘manhood’ and ‘womanhood’ are made-up categories,” an illegitimate and “violent” imposition of “control,” and where is the feminist who dares to dispute these assertions? Not every feminist is “genderqueer,” but no feminist in 2015 would defend the male/female distinction as a valid scientific understanding of biology for fear of being accused of giving aid and comfort to the sexists who “invented” and “imposed” these categories. The totalitarian nature of feminism is most apparent in its ability to silence criticism, enforcing ideological conformity by prohibiting dissent. In a 2001 book, Tammy Bruce dubbed the enforcers of this conformity The New Thought Police. A former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women, Tammy Bruce was purged from her leadership position and denounced by NOW’s national office because she led a protest against O.J. Simpson. NOW leaders were allied with the NAACP in viewing Simpson as a victim of racism, and were evidently willing to ignore evidence (including 911 recordings) of his violent abuse of Nicole Brown Simpson. One might think that feminists would care about a woman being nearly decapitated by a knife-wielding murderer, but Patricia Ireland, the national president of NOW, made clear the organization’s position in December 1995:

“I deeply regret,” Ms. Ireland said at a Washington news conference, that Ms. Bruce “has made public statements that clearly violate NOW’s commitment to stopping racism.”

By such methods do The New Thought Police shield themselves from criticism. Ideological conformity within the feminist movement attracts a certain type of disgruntled fanatic that Eric Hoffer described as The True Believer, and technology has provided an easy means for these fanatics to promote their radical views. It costs nothing for a young feminist to create a Tumblr blog and reach many thousands of like-minded activists around the world. The jargon of feminist gender theory — the concept that male/female differences are socially constructed by the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix — was once known only to a comparative handful of Women’s Studies professors and their students. Now anyone with a laptop and wifi hookup can access page after page devoted to these bizarre ideas.

It is tempting to laugh at weirdos like Miriam Mogilevsky, who identifies herself as a “queer, gay, femme, homoflexible lesbian with exceptions,” and is a columnist for the Everyday Feminism site, where she offers heterosexual feminists pointers on how to “Be Better Allies to Queer Women.” However, many unhappy young people are vulnerable to the kind of ideology-as-therapy solution that feminism offers them.

‘Girls Who Suddenly Decide They Are Boys’

Where does the “dysphoric female” on Tumblr learn to speak her “gender-critical” jargon? The Internet, of course. As a result, many parents are being confronted by teenage children who “come out” as transgender. This has become such a fad among some young people that even feminists have begun criticizing it. One woman whose daughter got caught up in the transgender craze started a blog called 4th Wave Now, and makes an entirely common-sense surmise about how and why this is happening to so many teenagers now:

Are teens influenced by what they imbibe, what’s in fashion, what celebrities (like Jazz Jennings and “Caitlyn” Jenner and Laverne Cox) are doing, what their peers are saying and doing? Might socially isolated teens be even more swayed by what they see on social media, while they sit for hours, alone in their rooms? . . .
My daughter, like so many others I’ve now heard about, emerged from months of self-imposed social isolation and YouTube/Reddit binges, to announce, out of the blue, that she was transgender.

A few excerpts from the commenters on her blog’s “About” page:

My precious 17 year old daughter has been sinking into the FTM cult for the past 18 months. I know of 7 other girls locally too, all of similar age. Many of them are on Tumblr, enjoying Facebook notoriety, anime loving, asexual, and claiming BPD or aspergers traits. . . .

I have been fearful and alert to my daughters’ trending towards FTM. . . . I am a hetero mom who has balked at stereotypes, most often alone, and fear that my inability to cope with my own marital constraints has affected my daughter’s understanding of how to be a female. . . . I fear my daughter doesn’t have good role models and turns to friends for answers. . . .

And still more comments:

My daughter, who is 17, told me last year on Mother’s Day that she was now my son. Since I suspected that she might be a lesbian, it wasn’t too much of a shock. However, when I began researching this subject I was extremely concerned with the medical intervention that takes place with these children. Then when I went to a meeting for parents with transgender children, I was shocked about how all of these parents were jumping on the bandwagon of drugs and surgery without questioning. . . .

Tears stream down my face as I read the entries. Until now I have felt so alone and helpless. I was beginning to think I was a crazy, terrible parent, as the loud and clear (and virtually the only) advice available when confronted with this parenting nightmare is to immediately and absolutely — without question — accept what the child is saying and get them started transitioning.

Add myself and my daughter to the growing (exploding?) list of concerned parents with girls who suddenly decide they are boys after puberty. Some day I might take the time to add my story to your blog, but honestly, it reads so much like the others already here: quirky, socially awkward girl who had always identified as a girl (although never a pink sparkly princess) suddenly decides that because she loves science, pokemon and video games rather than makeup, hairstyles and clothes she MUST actually be a boy. She says she is a gay boy, as she is attracted to boys.
She is a beautiful girl with lovely figure — my gut feeling is that my daughter wanted the attention she was getting from boys to stop. In addition to her rejection of the princess culture, she hated being objectified, ogled, pawed at and cat-called to. She has made herself as covered up and unattractive as possible, lost a good deal of weight (the curves are mostly gone) and declared herself a boy. Of course, the Tumblr culture and current Caitlyn Jenner worshiping by the uber-PC entertainment media have urged her along in her pursuit to disappear and cease existing as a female. . . .
[M]y smart, feminist, skeptical, open-minded daughter has fallen hook, line and sinker for the trans-cult scam.

Has “gender theory” become feminism’s Frankenstein monster? The “quirky, socially awkward girl” hits puberty and is horrified by the result — her “lovely figure” attracts unwanted attention from boys who, it seems, are poorly parented and inadequately supervised in schools. A mother’s tale of her adolescent daughter “being objectified, ogled, pawed at and cat-called to” raises a rather obvious question: Where are the mothers of these boys? Or for that matter, where are their fathers?

The same laissez-faire parenting attitude that permits a teenage girl to engage in “self-imposed social isolation and YouTube/Reddit binges” is mirrored by the abdication of adult authority that permits teenage boys to behave crudely toward girls at school. Yet progressives have spent decades lecturing parents against the “authoritarian” family (an incubator of fascism, according to Adorno, et al.) and one might be accused of child abuse for giving unruly teenagers a bit of old-fashioned discipline. Grown-ups have ceased to require respect from young people and, having no fear of parental authority, the insolent brats now expect grown-ups to give them whatever their adolescent appetites demand. (Recommended reading: The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family by Dana Mack.) Any adult who asserts the legitimacy of parental authority risks being branded an oppressive ogre, but what are the alternatives? If Mom and Dad are unwilling to set limits to their child’s behavior, it is entirely predictable that the child will be swayed by peers, and by whatever trends emerge from the popular culture, whether the trend is hip-hop, heroin or homosexuality.

Am I the only adult who objects to being lectured by teenage weirdos like the dysphoric gender-critical feminist who expects us to silently accept her “critique of men and masculinity and male violence and misogyny”? Who appointed her to lecture us? What is the basis of her authority?

We are not supposed to ask these questions, you see, and there is something strangely suspicious about the silent acceptance of feminist claims to moral authority. One suspects many men have fallen prey to the “free-floating guilt” produced by feminism’s kafkatrapping rhetoric and that many women are quite eager to exploit male guilt for their own benefit. The man who perceives the nature of this game recognizes that he cannot object too strongly to feminist rhetoric without being accused of “misogyny” and, as Tammy Bruce discovered, feminist leaders are viciously hateful toward any woman who openly criticizes them. Because so few people do speak out against feminism, it is easy for the few vocal critics to be demonized, marginalized and effectively silenced.

Once you understand feminism as a totalitarian ideology, the less likely you are to be surprised by the movement’s tactics, and the more you will recognize the importance of refusing to be silent about feminism’s lies.




 

Category: Sex Trouble

Operation Ivy Bells: Sea Story Of The Year

Posted on | December 8, 2015 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

I finished reading Operation Ivy Bells a month or so back. The author is a friend, and I owe him a review. But even if I didn’t know RGW personally, I’d still feel privileged to write this.

Is anybody old enough to remember a pre-Obama era when we knew who the Bad Guys were, and we took the fight to them? OIB is a straightforward sea story of the Good Old Days by a guy who was there. An intrepid special operations submarine goes up against the Soviet Union at the peak of its Commie might, and performs page-turning feats of derring-do. Spoiler alert: we win; they lose. But let me say a little more.
The author is a retired diver who participated actively in the source events. However, RGW is also a fine storyteller, keeping the action going and making the reader feel the sway of boat as she sneaks right under Ivan’s nose and acquires valuable information.

We follow Lieutenant J. R. “Mac” McDowell, a master of both submarining and saturation diving, through training and deployment aboard USS Halibut and a mission that is legendary. Anybody with any sea time in the Navy is going to be hard pressed to find a misplaced detail, making this an entertaining yarn suitable for even the most meticulous reader. I have no idea if RGW is working on a movie script. RGW’s prose does a fine job off explaining the action, but some well-done CGI could produce a thriller as good as The Hunt for Red October here.

Overally, Ivy Bells is an excellent yarn and holds together splendidly as such. Where I’d fall short of five stars for the story has to do with the character development. McDowell is something of a Naval superhero; I’ve met few in my experience who could be such consumate masters of their primary job (saturation diving) and another equally daunting (if related) skill, e.g. submarining. Even given that, I’ve rarely seen a skipper as cool as that of the USS Halibut, so casually letting a mere Lieutenant not of his own wardroom have that much driving time. And we really don’t get to learn anything of the other characters. No one in the book is burdened by relating the Cold War to life in general. In summary, we don’t get much deeper than the typical Clancy novel, and that’s OK.

All of that literary mumbo-jumbo sounds peevish, though. Pick up a copy of Operation Ivy Bells for that special veteran in your life. They’ll thank you!

Category: Books

Fact Checking The Ralph Peters Allegation Concerning The Totality Of Our President

Posted on | December 7, 2015 | 19 Comments

More at HotAir

Category: Barack Obama, Hot Air

In The Mailbox: 12.07.15

Posted on | December 7, 2015 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


“Today, December 7, 1941…a date that shall live in infamy…”


OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Conservative, Outspoken Jews Had It Coming
A View from the Beach: Maryland Attorney General Succumbs To Honey Trap
American Irony: The Reason Democrats Look Stupid Blaming The NRA For Mass Shootings
Politically Incorrect Conservative: Oops…
Da Tech Guy: The Elite Kill Me Last Caucus Explained
Michelle Malkin: The CAIR Effect – See Something, Do Nothing
Twitchy: White House Issues Embarrassing Correction To Obama’s Speech


RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Marine Le Pen’s National Front Leads In First Round Of French Regional Elections
American Thinker: Rebuking Obama’s Folly
BLACKFIVE: San Bernardino – Did We Dodge A Bullet?
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin – Remember Pearl Harbor
Don Surber: I’ll Take “Things Easy To Say When Ten SUVs Full of Secret Service Agents Protect You” For $200, Alex
Jammie Wearing Fools: LTC Ralph Peters Calls Obama “A Total Pussy” On Live TV
Joe For America: Court Rules That “In God We Trust” Belongs On Cop Cars
JustOneMinute: Bloviation At The Times
Pamela Geller: Over 72 Homeland Security Employees On Terror Watch List
Protein Wisdom: Loretta Lynch On San Bernardino Shooting – “A Wonderful Opportunity”
Shot In The Dark: Lie First, Lie Always – Crowd Source Edition
STUMP: 80 Percent Funding Myth Recent Roundup
The Gateway Pundit: MSNBC Crank Whines NYT Was Wrong To Show Tashfeen Malik’s Face In Terrorism Article
The Jawa Report: In London, Yet Another Random Muslim Attacks Random Infidels For No Apparent Reason
The Lonely Conservative: Hillary Wants To Allow Illegals To Buy Insurance Through Obamacare
This Ain’t Hell: Venezuela’s Anti-Communists Win Midterm Elections In A Landslide
Weasel Zippers: Trump Calls For “Total And Complete Shutdown Of Muslims Entering The United States”
Megan McArdle: Give Thanks To Williams-Sonoma And The Garlic Press
Mark Steyn: Mister Know-Nothing Denier Goes To Washington


Amazon Fire TV Stick – Just $39.99

Category: Linkagery

Rule 5 Sunday: Tigers On Top

Posted on | December 6, 2015 | 15 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

One must give credit where credit is due, and unfortunately this season it’s Clemson and not Alabama atop the BCS standings. So, preferring real women to anime, our appetizer this week is one of the Clemson Tigers cheerleading squad. As usual, the links that follow are often to pictures of young women generally considered NSFW, and the management is not responsible for your poor judgment should you happen to make bad choices about when and where to click those links.

Nice elbows, eh?

Politically Incorrect Conservative leads off again with Rule 5: Sara X Style, followed by Goodstuff with Cindy Crawford and Ninety Miles from Tyranny with Morning Mistress, Girls with Guns, and Hot Pick of the Late Night. Animal Magnetism changed it up this week, following his usual Rule 5 Friday with an Asian Invasion; The Last Tradition contributed Sade Baderinwa and Nicole Trunfio, and First Street Journal was all about the sailors this week.

EBL’s thundering herd this week included “Begin The Beguine”, The Tender Trap, Femmes Fatale, Sinatra fans, and some Eagles cheerleaders.

A View from the Beach contributes Little Surfer Girl – Anastasia Ashley, Friday Morning Fight, “A Thousand Thieves”, Dance, Dog!, I Come Baring News, The Weather Girl Dress, Who’s That Girl?, America’s Longest Legs, Can the Redskins Dwarf the Giants?, and Kaley Cuoco Regrets…

Postaldog chips in with Margaret Nolan, Next Door Nikki, Lady Gaga, and Maitland Ward.

At Soylent Siberia, it’s your morning coffee creamer as galley slave, a vintage Monday Motivationer, Tuesday Titillation, Humpday Hawtness Summer Breeze, Fursday Furlette, Latent Lingerie – Or Not, and Bath Night Weekender.

Proof Positive’s Friday Night Babe is Jessica Chastain, his Vintage Babe is Dany Carrel, Sex in Advertising is covered by Victoria’s Secret, and of course there’s the obligatory 49ers cheerleader. At Dustbury, it’s Jessica Stroup and Yuja Wang.

Thanks to everyone for all their linkagery! Deadline to submit links to the Rule 5 Wombat mailbox for next week’s Rule 5 roundup is midnight on Saturday, December 12.

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Category: Rule 5

FMJRA 2.0: Day Late & A Dollar Short

Posted on | December 6, 2015 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Crazy People Are Dangerous
Trevor Loudon
Noisy Room
Bookworm Room
Maggie’s Notebook
VA Right
Viewpoints of a Sagittarian
The Right Planet
Nice Deb
Regular Right Guy
Watcher of Weasels
Batshit Crazy News

Rule 5 Sunday: Them Ain’t Turkeys, Them Are Ducks
Regular Right Guy
Proof Positive
A View from the Beach
Ninety Miles from Tyranny
Batshit Crazy News

The #LaquanMcDonald Farce
The Political Hat

Political Correctness Is A Medieval Shield Trying To Stop A Hellfire Missile
The Political Hat

FMJRA 2.0: Black Friday In Vegas
The Pirate’s Cove
Batshit Crazy News

I’m Not Going to Say Student Radicals Are Merely Corrupt Hustlers …
Dark Brightness
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News

Is @Moloch_God Really Leading #SMOD & Cthulhu In The 2016 Apocalypse Race?
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News

The Feminist Fear Factor
Dark Brightness
Regular Right Guy
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 11.30.15
Regular Right Guy
Proof Positive
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 12.01.15
Regular Right Guy
Proof Positive
A View from the Beach

Dear @Clementine_Ford…
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 12.02.15
Proof Positive
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

The #SanBernardino Massacre
Batshit Crazy News

Syed Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, Named in #SanBernardino Massacre
The Camp of the Saints
Dark Brightness
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

Our Son Made It Through
First Street Journal
Hogewash
A View from the Beach
Batshit Crazy News

Friday Fiction Verse: 100 Word Challenge
Batshit Crazy News

In The Mailbox: 12.04.15
Proof Positive
Batshit Crazy News

Top linkers this week:

  1.  Batshit Crazy News (14)
  2.  Regular Right Guy (7)
  3.  A View from the Beach (6)
  4.  Proof Positive (5)

Thanks to everybody for the linkagery, and special thanks to the Watcher’s Council, which voted Crazy People Are Dangerous fourth place in non-Council posts last week!


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Category: FMJRA Award

Rangers Lead the Way

Posted on | December 6, 2015 | 32 Comments

Bob with his girlfriend Johanna, after his graduation Friday.

“Acknowledging the fact that a ranger is a more elite soldier, who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a ranger, my country expects me to move further, faster, and fight harder than any other soldier. . . .”
— The Ranger Creed

COLUMBUS, Georgia
Friday morning was cold, and our family arrived at Hurley Hill in three cars. My wife and I had Kennedy and Reagan with us. Emerson rode with Bob’s girlfriend Johanna. Jim and Jeff had ridden down with Matt, a boyhood friend of Bob and Jim’s. We had more than an hour to wait before the graduation ceremony for Ranger school Class 1-16 began.

Hurley Hill is named in honor of Sergeant-Major Pat Hurley, who was killed during Operation Desert Storm. The hill overlooks Victory Pond, where graduation ceremonies are held for Ranger School, “an intense 61-day combat leadership course oriented toward small-unit tactics”:

It has been called the “toughest combat course in the world” and “is the most physically and mentally demanding leadership school the Army has to offer.”

Graduation ceremonies feature a “Rangers in Action” demonstration — rappeling, helicopters, explosions, hand-to-hand combat — that is very impressive. The demands of Ranger School are extreme. Our son Bob was among 90 graduates in a class that had begun with 350 men, and the attrition rate of more than 70 percent came this close to stopping Bob. He made it through Camp Darby with flying colors, but had to “recycle” Mountain Phase because of negative “peer reviews.” This news caused much stress and prayer for us, especially for my wife.

Mrs. McCain with Bob and his twin brother Jim
(“photobombed” by 16-year-old brother Jeff).

Being an Army mom is a tough job under any circumstance, but when your son is going through Ranger School, he is incommunicado — no cellphones, no Facebook — and he only gets a few minutes to make a call from a pay phone after completing each phase. You can write him letters and he can write back, but this is a poor substitute for talking to him. Even if you’re not the “helicopter parenting” type, there is a frustrating sense of helplessness as a parent, knowing your son is going through such an ordeal and that all you can do is wait and pray and hope for the best.

Bob with his older sister Kennedy.

Mental toughness is essential to being an Army Ranger. The physical requirements are certainly demanding — 49 push-ups in two minutes, 59 sit-ups in two minutes, 5-mile run in 40 minutes, etc. — but the real test is psychological. The old saying by Vince Lombardi, “A winner never quits and a quitter never wins,” aptly expresses the situation of a Ranger School trainee. He is constantly pushed to the limits of his endurance while being required to perform tasks that require both physical strength and mental concentration, yelled at by Ranger sergeants who don’t want any quitters to make it through. The instructors all wear that Ranger tab, signifying their membership in an elite combat brotherhood, and quitters are not eligible for membership. About 40 percent of those who begin Ranger School are weeded out in Ranger Assessment Phase, a/k/a “RAP Week” at Camp Rogers, which finishes with a “ruck march” in which soldiers must march 12 miles with 65 pounds of gear in three hours.

When my children were young, I’d often take them on hikes in the woods. When the little ones would begin to whine about being tired, I’d repeat what has become a sort of family slogan, “There is no crying on the Bataan Death March.” Overcoming hardship is a learned skill, and a child will not learn it unless he is taught that he can do it.

“Yes, it’s two miles to the top of the mountain and I know you’re tired, but you can do it. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. You can make it. Stop whining.” Once you reach the top of the mountain — “Yea! We made it!” — the child has a sense of accomplishment, and has learned something about himself, namely that his feelings of being tired can be ignored, and that exhaustion and discouragement cannot stop him if he makes up his mind to overcome it.

“The president of Oklahoma Wesleyan blames the current campus tantrums on students who are taught to be ‘self-absorbed and narcissistic.’ He’s on to something, according to Jean Twenge, who has reported an increase in narcissism among young people. Narcissists have inflated conceptions of themselves and feel entitled to special privileges, while at the same time they’re quite brittle — if anyone questions their wonderfulness, they quickly take offense and turn extremely aggressive.”
— John Tierney at Instapundit

Excuse me if I feel no pity for students at Yale University (annual tuition $47,600) who expect us to believe they are victims of society because somebody said something that offended them. If such cowardly and immature bullies are the future leaders of America, as these petulant Ivy League brats imagine themselves to be, then our nation is hopelessly doomed. Does anyone — anyone — believe a nation can prosper if it accepts as “leaders” such overprivileged monsters as Jerelyn “Who the F**k Hired You?” Luther? America’s most prestigious universities have become playpens that indulge the tantrums of overgrown toddlers.

The people who run Ivy League universities have no sense of patriotic duty, or else they would not cultivate a climate where spoiled children like Jerelyn Luther are permitted to scream obscenities at the faculty. Indeed, I suspect that the faculty of Yale are all Marxist subversives who hate America as much as Jerelyn Luther hates America, because if there was even one patriot on the Yale faculty, he would have resigned in protest and publicly denounced Yale President Peter Salovey as a gutless fool for his abject surrender to the student mob. “We failed you” — yes, Dr. Salovey, you failed them by not expelling them all, thus to teach them a lesson the impudent scum obviously need to learn.

But I digress . . .

Bob with his brothers and his friend Matt.

The real test for Bob was being “recycled” in Mountain Phase, conducted at Camp Merrill near Dahlonega, Georgia. Having succeeded in getting past the initial ordeal of the Benning Phase at Camp Rogers and Camp Darby, he was confronted with the unaccustomed experience of failure. Naturally, he felt that this was not his fault, and that the negative “peer reviews” were unfair. Here was a valuable lesson: It doesn’t matter what’s “fair.”

Life is often unfair. People wrongly suffer harm through no fault of their own, and if we allow ourselves to sulk over the harms we’ve suffered, we will never accomplish anything useful in life. Some people go through life reacting to every failure by saying, “It’s not my fault,” and blaming others for their problems. We call these people losers or, if they convert their self-pity to political ideology, we call them “activists.” Life is unfair, says the loser, and this unfairness is social injustice, and therefore we must rearrange the world to make life better for the losers. These social justice schemes never yield the “fairness” they promise, and when they fail, the ideologues who advocated these policies then blame their enemies for their failure. When feminism fails to achieve its goals, feminists always blame the patriarchy, and anyone who wants to go through life like that — lashing out at scapegoats, blaming their failures on others — is a loser.

A truly radical thought: Maybe life is fair.

Maybe the hardship you suffer is for your own good. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned from a situation that seems to you manifestly unfair. Maybe your failure is not 100% your fault, but if it is only 1% your fault, you should forget about the other 99% and concentrate on whatever part of the problem you can change. If you can meet the challenge and survive, your triumph over adversity will make you stronger. And this was what Bob faced when he had to “recycle” Camp Merrill. Keep in mind what a Ranger candidate must endure:

Military folk wisdom has it that Ranger School’s physical toll is like years of natural aging; high levels of fight-or-flight stress hormones (epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol), along with standard sleep deprivation and continual physical strain, inhibit full physical and mental recovery throughout the course.
Common maladies during the course include weight loss, dehydration, trench foot, heatstroke, frostbite, chilblains, fractures, tissue tears (ligaments, tendons, muscles), swollen hands, feet, knees, nerve damage, loss of limb sensitivity, cellulitis, contact dermatitis, cuts, and insect, spider, bee, and wildlife bites.

By the time he finished Mountain Phase the first time, Bob weighed 20 pounds less than he did before beginning Ranger School. He was physically exhausted from sleep deprivation and constant training and, in this depleted condition, now had to cope with the psychological stress of going through Camp Merrill again. Never have I been so worried about his morale. When you are accustomed to winning — when success is a habit — defeat and failure are not something you expect to encounter. It’s kind of like what Alabama had to deal with when they lost to Ole Miss. Here you are, the highly-rated team in pursuit of a championship, and you find yourself unexpectedly beaten. If you are of a philosophical inclination, you may perceive you have paid the price for hubris, and that the injury to your pride was in some sense deserved. Bob failing a course because of “peer reviews” was like Alabama giving up 43 points to Ole Miss.

Somehow, Alabama recovered from that defeat to win the SEC Championship, and Bob recovered from being recycled at Camp Merrill to complete Ranger School and earn that coveted tab. Roll Tide!

Pinning the tab on Bob’s uniform at graduation.

So our prayers have been answered, and we are now on our way back home. Bob will have a long leave before his next assignment. He’s eating like a horse and sleeping like a log, recovering from his strenuous ordeal. We went out to eat Friday and he ate a whole pizza, then ate everything the rest of us had left over.

Clockwise from lower left: Reagan, Kennedy,
Emerson, Jim, Matt, Johanna, Bob, Jefferson, me.

Thanks to all the readers who responded to my appeal Thursday by contributing to the Shoe Leather Fund to pay for our trip to Georgia. Our family is grateful for your support.




 

Category: Family, Military
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