The Other McCain

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

Kimberlin Trial: The ‘Yuck’ Factor

Posted on | August 17, 2014 | 12 Comments

“Brett Kimberlin is a pedophile.”
— Ali A. Akbar, Aug. 11, 2014

Aaron Walker is transcribing (Part I, Part II, Part III) this past week’s trial in the Maryland case Kimberlin v. Walker, et al., in which John Hoge, Ali Akbar and myself were co-defendants. Of all that he alleged in his original complaint — stalking, harassment, etc. — Brett Kimberlin seems to have decided that his case in court would focus almost exclusively on the use of the word “pedophile” to describe him.

This was rather unwise. Most of his claims had been disallowed in preliminary proceedings, so that the case as it went to court was simply defamation and so-called “false light invasion of privacy.” For Kimberlin to prevail at trial, he would have had to prove that allegations of pedophilia were false. And, as everyone who has read the Indianapolis Star‘s coverage of his Speedway bombing spree knows, the suspicions regarding Kimberlin’s involvement with Debbie Barton — granddaughter of Julia Scyphers, who was the victim of an unsolved murder — were quite disturbing. Nor was this all the available evidence on this subject. In his 1996 biography of Kimberlin, Citizen K, journalist Mark Singer used the pseudonym “Jessica” for Debbie Barton, as he recounted Kimberlin’s relationship with the girl:

From the beginning of his friendship with Sandi [Barton], Kimberlin said, her younger daughter developed an attachment to him. Sandi would come to Eagle Creek, to tend his horses and ride her own; Jessica would tag along, and “she used to hang on me, she didn’t want to let me go.” Jessica was ten years old and Kimberlin was twenty. . . .
For three consecutive summers, 1974 through 1976, they took vacations of a week or longer in Disney World, Mexico, and Hawaii. Sandi couldn’t get time off from work, so on these summer trips it was just the two of them — Brett and Jessica.
Eyebrows levitated. A drug-dealing colleague had memories of conversations with Kimberlin that struck him as odd: “We’d see a girl, who was pubescent or prepubescent, and Brett would get this smile and say, ‘Hey, what do you think? Isn’t she great?’ It made me very uncomfortable.” Another recalled Kimberlin introducing Jessica as “my girlfriend,” and if irony was intended, it was too subtle to register. To a coworker . . . Sandi confided that Kimberlin was “grooming Jessica to be his wife.” . . .

You can buy Citizen K via Amazon and read the whole thing for yourself, and you will find that Debbie Barton was not the only young girl in whom Brett Kimberlin expressed interest. There was another girl — 15 at the time of her “romance” with Kimberlin, then 24 — who figured in Kimberlin’s alibi for his whereabouts on the day in 1978 that Julia Scyphers was shot to death in an apparent contract killing. However, Debbie Barton was very important to the story of Kimberlin’s bombing spree because, as the Indianapolis Star’s Joe Gelarden reported at the time, after bombs began exploding around the Indianapolis suburb of Speedway, police eventually concluded that this was an attempt to distract them from their investigation of the Scyphers murder. Because she had reportedly intervened to prevent Kimberlin from having access to her granddaughter, Debbie Barton, Kimberlin was a suspect, as Gelarden wrote: “Kimberlin seemed to be the only one with a possible motive — to distract police attention from the Scyphers murder and delay or halt their quiet investigation of him.”

It is impossible for any journalist to report accurately on Kimberlin’s criminal career and ignore this aspect of the case, nor can any honest reporter ignore evidence suggesting that Kimberlin’s interest in underage girls was a persistent pattern. Toward the end of Citizen K, Mark Singer describes how, while in federal prison, Kimberlin met a fellow inmate who was a Ukrainian immigrant. This inmate had in his cell a photo of his teenage niece, Juliya. According to Singer, Kimberlin pestered this man for his niece’s mail address and, when he obtained it, Kimberlin then began a three-year pen-pal correspondence with the girl. After he was released from prison in 1994, Kimberlin brought this Ukrainian girl (by then in her early 20s) to America, where they had a relationship that broke up after a few months.

Think about this: Here was a federal convict whose crimes were reportedly believed by investigators to have been related to his interest in a young girl. While serving time in prison, now in his late 30s and early 40s, Kimberlin then begins writing love letters to a teenage girl he’s never met. Indeed, as Mark Singer reported, Kimberlin composed a song for this girl called “Waiting to Meet.” Furthermore, in a 1996 interview with Washington City Paper, when he was futilely pursuing a rock music career, Kimberlin seemed quite unapologetic about his sexual enthusiasm for young girls:

Not all the songs on his album — which Mahern characterizes as minimally produced and “pretty much Brett” — have political overtones, which in some respects may be unfortunate: While tracks like “Life’s a Bitch (For a Government Snitch)” and “Who’s Next” (a song about unfounded sex crime accusations) have a definite edge to them, others, like “Waiting to Meet” and “Teen Dream” (both about having sex with teenage girls) are lacking in subtlety and tend to make one squirm. But this is exactly what Kimberlin wants.
“I say things a lot of people are afraid to say. Yeah, ‘Teen Dream’ is about fucking a teenage girl. Every guy who’s seen a good-looking teenage girl has thought about it. I’m talking about that lecherous quality that every man, though he won’t act on it, has.”

Kimberlin was a 41-year-old recently released federal convict in 1996 when he proclaimed his desire to have sex with teenage girls. Insofar as he sued us for $1 million, claiming among other things that it was defamation to apply the word “pedophile” to him, any juror could have looked at this evidence — had the trial proceeded to the point where the defense presented its case — and decided whether such a label was appropriate. However, the law regarding defamation is quite clear that it is the plaintiff’s burden to show that a statement of fact by defendants is false; the defense need not prove any such statement true. It can be (and probably would have been) argued that someone who said “Brett Kimberlin is a pedophile” was merely expressing an opinion based on available facts. As a matter of law, then, it was impossible for Brett Kimberlin to prevail at trial. Once Kimberlin concluded his two-day courtroom presentation, the defense made a motion for a judgment in their favor, which Judge Johnson was obliged to grant.

Yet during the trial, which concluded before the defense could present the case I have just briefly summarized, the testimony and questioning during Kimberlin’s presentation brought up an important point: Kimberlin presented no evidence that any of the defendants had used the word “pedophile” to describe him prior to July 2013, when his estranged wife filed third-degree sexual assault charges against him.

Charges State v Kimberlin (Redacted) by himself2462

Kimberlin’s wife told John Hoge and Aaron Walker that Kimberlin met her on a beach in Ukraine when she was 14, shortly after his release from prison. As she later explained, Kimberlin brought her to the United States in September 1996, a few weeks before her 16th birthday. Kimberlin also brought over some of her family members from Ukraine, his wife said. As she said in her sworn affidavit, Kimberlin began having sex with her when she was still 15, before he subsequently married her when she was 16 and he was 42. Because the legal age of consent in Maryland is 16, the claim by Kimberlin’s wife that they had premarital sex when she was still 15 gave grounds for a charge of third-degree sexual assault. His wife also said in her affidavit that she had once seen Kimberlin make sexual advances toward her 12-year-old cousin.

This was made a matter of public record by Kimberlin’s estranged wife a few weeks after her split from him became public when Kimberlin filed for a domestic protective order against her, and also sought to have criminal charges filed against her boyfriend, Jay Elliott. This courtroom battle, which Kimberlin himself initiated, became the basis of my coverage, which was both newsworthy in its own right (given Kimberlin’s notoriety) and relevant to his prior criminal history. Furthermore, Kimberlin’s wife said he had threatened her, and had falsely claimed that she was mentally ill, so this story was a matter of public interest, insofar as the safety of a woman and her children might be at stake.

T. Kimberlin v. B. Kimberlin Petition for Protective Order 7.9.13 (OCR) by AaronWorthing

After an August 2013 hearing in Maryland in the Kimberlin v. Kimberlin proceedings, Mrs. Kimberlin was apparently discouraged. She reportedly decided against pressing the sexual assault charges, which were then dropped by the State’s Attorney. The last I heard — and this was hearsay, which would have been inadmissable at trial — Mrs. Kimberlin and her boyfriend Jay Elliott had left Maryland; some said she went to Illinois; others say she is now in Utah. During the trial, Kimberlin claimed his wife had returned home, although he produced no evidence of this, and even the judge asked why Kimberlin didn’t bring his wife to testify at the trial:

THE COURT: You know the witness you really need?
KIMBERLIN: Huh?
THE COURT: Is your wife here?
KIMBERLIN: She’s, she’s packing. We’re leaving on vacation tomorrow—
THE COURT: Is she gonna testify? See, that’s — if she were going to testify, that would be one thing, but a 15 year old?

None of the defendants ever expected that Brett Kimberlin would make this the basis of a $1 million lawsuit, and we were all shocked that this lawsuit — which seemed bogus from the start — was allowed to proceed all the way to trial after 11 months of preliminaries. The most shocking thing of all was that, during the trial, Kimberlin insisted on putting his own 15-year-old daughter on the witness stand. Aaron Walker transcribes the courtroom discussion:

Court: You… she’s not a party in this case.
Kimberlin: She’s not a party, she’s a witness.
Court: To what that they did?
Kimberlin: That they harmed me and my family and she’s, you know, I ask you to give me a chance to make that [unintelligible]
Court: But she can’t testify what? Her school and all? That is not relevant.
Kimberlin: She can testify that I’m not a pedophile. She can testify that…
Court: How can…? She can testify that you never did anything to her.
Kimberlin: Or anyone she knows.
Court: Or anyone that she knows.
[Defense attorney Patrick] Ostronic: I will stipulate that he never did anything to her. We’ll stipulate to that.
Kimberlin: No. I want her… I want the harm, there’s harm . . . these people . . . this jury needs to know the harm that this has caused my family.

Every decent person in the courtroom, I believe, was disgusted by Kimberlin’s insistence on compelling his daughter’s testimony. This was his choice, and not ours, and entirely his responsibility.

Please donate to BomberSuesBloggers.com to help defend First Amendment rights that were threatened by Brett Kimberlin.

 

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Feminism as Rationalization

Posted on | August 17, 2014 | 61 Comments

One thing you notice if you pay close attention to the autobiographical details that feminists let slip as they’re telling their narratives (because “the personal is political,” y’know, and feminism enthrones extreme subjectivity as “the authority of experience”) is that many of these women have psychological damage they channel into political belief because they can’t come to grips with it any other way.

Her misfortunes can never be chalked up to mere bad luck, nor can the source of her hurt feelings be accepted as “the way of the world.” Still less can any feminist look at her problems and ask to what extent she is responsible for her own failures and unhappiness. Instead, her ideology offers her ready-made rationalization that seem to explain her problems: Whatever is wrong with her life, somehow it can be blamed on men and the patriarchal system of male domination. In any other context, we recognize this as blame-shifting and scapegoating, but when women explain their personal miseries by yelping that they are victims of oppression by the patriarchy, we dignify their rationalization by calling it a political philosophy.

OK, so I’ve been researching feminist “gender theory” as part of my “Sex Trouble” series on radical feminism. And while looking for a certain article I’d read earlier but forgot to bookmark, I was Googling about butch/femme lesbian identities. (Much weirdness out there, folks.) There among the several search results, I turned up this:

Heteronormativity and Homophobia:
A Femme’s Perspective
“But you don’t look gay!”
That is the resounding response I get whenever I come out to people. I vent a lot about how hard it is to be an invisible member of the LGBT community, but my frustration goes a lot deeper than people think.
A lot of people assume that “gender-conforming” queer women don’t experience homophobia and harassment because they often “blend in” with heteronormative society, but I most certainly experience homophobia- just in a unique way. I’m at my breaking point in dealing with peoples’ ignorance and disrespect on a weekly basis — and the worst part is I’m told that it’s not a big deal and I shouldn’t let it upset me. It’s easy for people who have no idea what it’s like to have their sexuality questioned and pried into at every turn to tell me to just relax and get over it. That’s why I’m writing this post: I hope that people will learn to take a walk in the shoes of a sexual minority- particularly an invisible one. . . .
Homophobic people who might otherwise snub me are nice to me because on the outside, I appear conventional. The homophobia often comes later, once I choose to come out. I choose to come out, because to me, being closeted is not an option. If I hide who I am, homophobia wins. I’m also a walking contradiction to many lesbian stereotypes, so I think it’s important to break down peoples’ misconceptions by living my life openly.
Being treated differently than my straight counterparts — being treated like a spectacle, a liar/fake/confused person, an “exception” to someone’s homophobia, a male fantasy — isn’t any less hurtful or discriminatory than being hated on sight for being gay. If you’re a member of the LGBT community who accuses femmes of being privileged or a straight person who doesn’t recognize this type of homophobia, I hope my experience gives you a new perspective.

Hmmm. The whole “femme invisibility”/”femme privilege” thing has been endlessly discussed among lesbian feminists, and this article is by some random girl with a Blogspot site, not from a professor or journalist, but still there was something intriguing:

Jessica
I’m a 24-year old woman with a BA in Psychology and Women’s Studies, looking to go to graduate school for clinical psychology.

Oh, a young Women’s Studies major! How delightful! 

Jessica Clayton-Matthews attended Simmons College in Boston (tuition $35,200 a year) and she doesn’t blog frequently on her feminist site, but she’s got another blog devoted completely to her struggles with eating disorders, from which we learn:

For as long as I can remember I had . . . been a picky eater and generally “weird about food” . . .
I started restricting when I was 12, but I wasn’t diagnosed with an eating disorder until after I was hospitalized at 15. I was dealing with trauma at home and I had severe social and generalized anxiety as well as depression. Restriction and later over-exercise became a way for me to calm my anxiety and distract myself from the trauma as well as confusion regarding my sexual orientation. Restriction also became a form of self-punishment, because I had very low self-worth and felt that I didn’t deserve nourishment.
Another contribution to my eating disorder was going to school in a very wealthy community that placed a high value on appearance — I switched schools halfway through the sixth grade, but the damage had already been done. I was a few pounds heavier than most of my friends simply because I was a year older and started going through puberty sooner and I was made to feel ashamed of that. . . . I developed body dysmorphia as early as 11 years old and felt painfully uncomfortable in my own skin. . . .
My family is very loving and supportive, but it took them awhile to understand the severity of my eating disorder. When I was diagnosed at age 15 I don’t think any of us took the diagnosis very seriously, because my other mental health issues felt like more of an immediate threat (I was suicidal at the time).

Hmmm. Anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, suicidal feelings. You see she had all kinds of mental health issues which can’t be blamed on homophobia or the patriarchy. She had “confusion regarding [her] sexual orientation,” but was that all?

When I was 12 I started having romantic feelings towards women, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I was very ashamed and confused and I just wanted to go back to being a little girl with no hormones so I wouldn’t have to deal.

OK, fine. Lots of kids experience “confusion” about their “romantic feelings” without going totally psycho. “Body dysmorphia”? Wanting “to go back to being a little girl with no hormones”? Feelings of “very low self-worth”? These are extreme reactions. One wonders about the “family trauma at home” she was experiencing, but with no further details available, that’s a dead end. Were all her problems psychological? It turns out there’s more to the story:

To give an example of a piece of my internalized patriarchal values that I’ve been working through: I have PCOS (Poly-cystic ovary syndrome), which is one of the major causes of infertility in women. Now, for as long as I can remember, I haven’t been interested in having biological children. I want to be a mother, but I’ve always wanted to adopt and somehow known that it was what I am meant to do. But, when I was diagnosed with PCOS, I felt depressed and broken. I started mourning the possibility of not being able to have a biological child, not because I ever really wanted one, but because I thought it made me “less of a woman”. And I kid you not, this thought crossed my mind: “What kind of woman am I if I can’t have a biological child? I am useless!” My reaction was 100% due to the damn patriarchy convincing me that my most important asset as a woman is my ability to bear children.
This is terribly embarrassing to admit, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that, feminist or not, the ideals of the patriarchy are so integrated into our culture that we internalize certain ideals without even realizing it.

Hmmm. She has a disease that causes infertility, but “for as long as [she] can remember, [she hasn’t] been interested in having biological children”? That would seem rather convenient, but she still feels bad about it and, of course, she blames “the damn patriarchy”!

Hey, what do we know about Polycystic Ovary Syndrome?

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), also called hyperandrogenic anovulation (HA), or Stein-Leventhal syndrome, is one of the most common endocrine disorders among females. . . .
Polycystic ovaries develop when the ovaries are stimulated to produce excessive amounts of male hormones (androgens), in particular testosterone, by either one or a combination of the following (almost certainly combined with genetic susceptibility:
the release of excessive luteinizing hormone (LH) by the anterior pituitary gland through high levels of insulin in the blood (hyperinsulinaemia) in women whose ovaries are sensitive to this stimulus.
Also, reduced levels of sex-hormone-binding globulin can result in increased free androgens.

Ms. Clayton-Matthews, it would seem, suffers from an endocrine disorder involving “excessive amounts of male hormones,” and we  may wonder if this in turn explains other problems, including her pubescent “confusion regarding . . . sexual orientation.” But it’s easier to blame “the damn patriarchy,” you see, and to think that this woman has a degree in psychology is astonishing. Guess her double-major in Women’s Studies cancelled out everything else.

 

 

Category: Feminism

Texas Democrats vs. the Rule of Law

Posted on | August 16, 2014 | 44 Comments

Even a liberal like Jonathan Chait can see it:

They say a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and this always seemed like hyperbole, until Friday night a Texas grand jury announced an indictment of governor Rick Perry. The “crime” for which Perry faces a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison is vetoing funding for a state agency. The conventions of reporting — which treat the fact of an indictment as the primary news, and its merit as a secondary analytic question — make it difficult for people reading the news to grasp just how farfetched this indictment is.
Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg — a Democrat who oversees the state’s Public Corruption unit — was arrested for driving very, very drunk. What followed was a relatively ordinary political dispute. Perry, not unreasonably, urged Lehmberg to resign. Democrats, not unreasonably, resisted out of fear that Perry would replace her with a Republican. Perry, not unreasonably, announced and carried out a threat to veto funding for her agency until Lehmberg resigned.
I do not have a fancy law degree from Harvard or Yale or, for that matter, anywhere. I am but a humble country blogger. And yet, having read the indictment, legal training of any kind seems unnecessary to grasp its flimsiness.

You can read the whole thing. It is only logical that it is a bad thing to have a state official whose job is to investigate corruption charged with drunk driving. Yet because she is a Democrat and the governor is a Republican, Lehmberg refused to resign for strictly partisan reasons. The governor then exercised his prerogative in an effort to force Lehmberg to do the right thing — and Democrats then decided that the governor’s exercise of lawful authority was a crime.

 

Category: Democrats, Rick Perry, Texas

FMJRA 2.0: Call Me

Posted on | August 16, 2014 | 13 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

‘Hi, We’re Lesbian Feminists and We’re Here to Talk to Your Daughter About Sex’

Sue Me Again, You Evil Liar

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.11.14

Rule 5 Tuesday

What To Think Of Kevin Drum

Shrew Culture Update

FMJRA 2.0: My TV And You

TRIAL BEGINS TODAY

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.12.14

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.13.14

Elementary School Teacher’s Lesbian Affair Causes Texas Political Scandal

“Wacky Conservative Hit Piece About Raging Lesbian Feminist Carmen Rios”

Smittypalooza? Delayed Victory Celebration? Whatever!

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.14.14

The Unspeakably Vile David Brock

LIVE AT FIVE: 08.15.14

So Nice, We’re Doing It Twice

Off The Shelf

Don’t Mistake Disinterest in Emotionalism for Cowardice, @PatDollard

Top linkers this week:

  1. (tied) Batshit Crazy News and EBL (17)
  2. That Mr. G Guy (14)
  3. Regular Right Guy (8)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery! Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA is noon on Saturday, August 23.


Parallel Lines

Category: FMJRA Award

Reality TV Mom Gets 10 Years in Prison

Posted on | August 16, 2014 | 32 Comments

Andrea Clevenger with daughter Kylie (left); going to prison (right).

Did you ever watch reality TV and think, “These twisted freaks need to be in jail”? I mean, the entire cast of Jersey Shore, for example, or the parents of Honey Boo-Boo, or the “Real Housewives” or that evil sadist Abby Lee from Dance Moms — so-called “reality” shows offer up a sociopathic smorgasbord of exhibitionist weirdos who get paid to parade their neuroses in front of the cameras for the entertainment of America’s cable-TV audience. If somehow, by the modern miracle of satellite communications, the Lifetime network is accessible in the remote mountain regions of Pakistan where fugitive al-Qaeda terrorists are still hiding out, you can understand some of their Islamic rage: “Who is this hateful Abby Lee woman? Death to the infidels!”

For 16 episodes from July 2012 until its cancellation in October 2013, the TLC series Cheer Perfection featured the training and competitions of youth cheerleading teams from Cheer Time Revolution, based in Sherwood, Arkansas. It was, to some extent, a spin-off of TLC’s creepy pageant show, Toddlers & Tiaras, because some of the families from T&T were also on Cheer Perfection. Hyping the pilot episode, ABC’s Juju Chang reported for Good Morning America:

In Sherwood, Ark., where cheerleaders are like royalty, Alisha Dunlap is the queen bee.
TLC’s new reality-TV show, “Cheer Perfection,” depicts the competitive world of cheerleading, and shows that the cheerleaders’ mothers are just as competitive as their daughters and are unapologetic about living vicariously through them.
The show takes viewers behind the scenes of a sport that is not for the faint of heart. And Dunlap, the co-owner and coach of Cheer Time Revolution in Sherwood, is tough.
“If you fall again, I’m going to replace you,” she tells daughter Cambry, a cheerleader.
Asked whether she could be viewed as being too hard on the cheerleaders, Dunlap said, “These kids know me so well. It doesn’t even bother them. … I think they like to get me excited. They know I care.”

“They know I care.” Yeah, and 15 years from now when that girl is on Prozac and going through an ugly custody battle with her abusive ex-husband, I’m sure you’ll be there for her, right? When the show got picked up for its first eight-episode season in December 2012, New York Daily News critic David Hinckley was brutal:

Watching children get abused to satisfy the performance fantasies of adults got old several reality shows ago.
But it sells, so here’s the latest, an eight-episode look at a cheerleading program for preteen girls.

How is it that cheerleading, an extracurricular activity that began as simple rah-rah squads for school football teams, has metamorphosed into this high-pressure all-or-nothing cutthroat competition? Don’t get me wrong: I’m all in favor of anything that gets kids off the videogame console and engaged in vigorous exercise, but why indoctrinate girls in this Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest mentality? One could criticize this phenomenon from either a feminist or a traditionalist perspective, politically. More importantly, however, one could criticize it from a psychiatric perspective. Parents who maniacally push their kids into this stuff are clearly crazy, and they’re making their kids crazy, too. Which brings us to the disturbing story of Andrea Clevenger:

Andrea Clevenger, a mom who was on the TLC cheerleading show, “Cheer Perfection,” pleaded guilty [Aug. 7] to having sex with a 13-year-old boy.
She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Clevenger acknowledged in court that she had sex in her home and in a car with the teenage boy, who knew her own daughter. She also admitted sending him sexually explicit photos.
The 34-year-old mom, who is from the Little Rock, Arkansas suburb Sherwood, will have to register as a sex offender . . .
Clevenger received two 10-year prison sentences — one for sexual assault, another for engaging a child in sexually explicit conduct — but will serve them concurrently.

 The boy was reportedly a friend of Clevenger’s daughter Kylie, who was one of the cheerleaders featured on “Cheer Perfection,” and I’m sure all the kids in Kylie’s school were entertained when police released to the media her mom’s arrest affidavit:

I, Detective Frank Spence of the Sherwood Police Department, do attest the following statement is true and known to me through investigation.
At approximately 9:22 a.m., on November 27, 2013, I received a referral from the Arkansas Child Abuse Hotline regarding a juvenile victim, a 13-year-old white male, having disclosed being raped by Andrea M. Clevenger (white/female/DOB 05/21/1980), at her residence, in Sherwood, Arkansas. . . .
The juvenile victim said he was at the home when Clevenger began making advances toward him. The juvenile victim said Clevenger instructed him to sit on the couch in the common area of her residence and remove his pants, and he complied. The juvenile victim told me after he removed his pants at her direction, she got “on top” of him, put his penis in her vagina and engaged in sexual intercourse with him. The juvenile victim related she also told him to relay when he was close to ejaculation and when he did so, she removed his penis from her vagina and placed it in her mouth, where he ejaculated. He also told me she engaged him in oral sex by putting his penis in her mouth on two separate occasions, both times in mid to late October of 2013, while parked in her vehicle in an area unfamiliar to him. In addition, he said she sent him multiple multimedia messages depicting sexual explicit conduct . . . and sent him pictures, depicting herself without clothing. . . .
While the victim’s mother wrote her statement, I published to the victim the images extracted from his telephone and he identified thirty-two (32) images as those he received from Clevenger. . . . Of those images, eighteen (18) depicted bare breasts, seven (7) depicted breasts in a bra or corset, and six (6) depicted a bare vagina.

Any psychologist would say that this kind of depraved behavior between a 34-year-old mother and her daughter’s 13-year-old friend is symptomatic of an extremely selfish, narcissistic and irresponsible personality. Leaving aside any question of why a grown woman would be sexually attracted to pubescent boys, we must ask why Clevenger would act on that deviant urge, heedless of the potential consequences for the boy, for herself, and especially for her own daughter. Kylie Clevenger is surely now traumatized twice over: First, by the devastating knowledge that her mother is a pervert, and second, by the predictable cruelty of her peers. We shudder to imagine what taunts her schoolmates now hurl at this poor girl because of her mother’s infamous criminal conduct.

As the ABC News report said, however, we’re talking about a mother who was “unapologetic about living vicariously through” her daughter, and any Freudian would have a field day psychoanalyzing the implications of Andrea Clevenger’s heinous perversity.

Maybe TLC should produce a new “reality” series about female sex offenders. Call it Creepy Criminal Cougar Moms.

(Hat-tip: Interested Participant.)

ADDENDUM: If you want to understand the cultural impact of media on young people, please permit me to recommend Neil Postman’s 1994 book, The Disappearance of Childhood.

 

Category: Crime, Sex

The Moral Case is the Simple One

Posted on | August 16, 2014 | 56 Comments

by Smitty

The question is not: “What if your daughter was a porn star?” The question is “How shall one maximize joy in life?”

Linker starts off with observations that are fair as far as they go:

No, libertarianism hasn’t consistently changed how Americans think about taxation, government regulation, or foreign policy. But it is transforming how we think about morality. We can see it in rapidly changing views about gay marriage, in the growing acceptance of recreational marijuana usage, and in the rise of a non-judgmental outlook on sex and pleasure more generally.

The point here is that we’re being instructed NOT to think, to reflect, to ponder, to do cost/benefit analysis, to learn vicariously from the mistakes of others, to picture how we assume a matriarchal/patriarchal role in our extended families as a result of our choices.

No, we’re all eat, drink, and be merry these days. If we’re not having fun, it’s Bush’s fault.

Ask yourself how you would feel if Weeks — porn star Belle Knox — was your daughter.

I submit that virtually every honest person — those with children of their own, as well as those who merely possess a functional moral imagination — will admit to being appalled at the thought.

And with good reason. You put massive amounts of effort into raising a son/daughter. You want to impart timeless values that ensure continuity of society to them. And they. . .debase themselves. Now, the Godless Commie Sodomites have been quick to attack anything positive in the way of traditional morality, saying, essentially: “Hedonism is the new morality.”

Satan’s lies are neither new nor sustainable. Belle Knox–will she achieve happiness and honor under the sun? Can you name ANY porn stars who’ve EVER achieved any place of honor in society? It’s fairly simple: once you get on all fours and lower yourself to being a common dog, it’s not easily recoverable. Also simple: retaining some dignity.

This post is not even some hyper-morality play, trying to say you’re going to Hay-Ell if you [screw/smoke/sniff/sin]. No. This is an appeal to pragmatism. Look at who is successful: the sober, educated, modest, spiritually alive, professionally reliable people.

I haven’t had as much sex as Belle Knox. I’ve also never viewed sexuality as some kind of video game or competitive sport. I hope that she and her ilk repent of their ways and pursue that which is of lasting value in life, for such is not to be found in the canine position.

Category: Culture

‘Wacky Conservative Hit Piece About Raging Lesbian Feminist Carmen Rios’

Posted on | August 15, 2014 | 80 Comments

Carmen Rios (@c_rios) is communications coordinator at the Feminist Majority Foundation and also a columnist at the lesbian blog Autostraddle, which has been sarcastically called “Cosmo for Queers.” Ms. Rios’ career as a lesbian activist was the subject of a blog post here Sunday, the latest in my “Sex Trouble” series about radical feminism. This got noticed by her fellow Autostraddlers, who put up a post titled:

17 Comments On Lesbian Recruitment Tactics
From This Wacky Conservative Hit Piece
About Raging Lesbian Feminist Carmen Rios

Of course, I didn’t think of my article as a “hit piece,” and have no personal animosity toward Ms. Rios. As I explained in my article, I had never heard of her until I was researching the question of how many colleges and universities have Women’s Studies programs and how many students those programs enroll. Ms. Rios had written a column that included data on this topic and, in the same article, referenced the idea of Women’s Studies being “Lesbo Recruitment 101.” In another column (part of a series by her), Ms. Rios told how she personally became a “raging lesbian feminist” after taking a Women’s Studies class. These refreshingly honest remarks were entirely in keeping with what I’d learned in my research about radical feminist theory, and the fact that the Women’s Studies curriculum at most schools is anti-male and anti-heterosexual, i.e., “Feminism is a journey to lesbianism.”

Whether or not you are a feminist (obviously, I’m not) or a lesbian (obviously, I’m not), the correlation between these three variables — radical feminism, lesbianism, and Women’s Studies programs — is a phenomenon worthy of critical scrutiny. Everyone who has followed my months of research on the subject probably could offer his or her own interpretation of this phenomenon; I’m not in a position to decree what you should believe. At times, I have offered my own speculations and insights, but what I have mainly done is to quote feminist spokeswomen (authors, academics and activists) whose theories form the core of the attack on what has been called “heteronormative patriarchy.”

“Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice.”
— Ti-Grace Atkinson, 1971

“Male dominance is sexual. . . .
“A feminist theory of sexuality would locate sexuality within a theory of gender inequality, meaning the social hierarchy of men over women. . . .
“To be clear: what is sexual is what gives a man an erection. Whatever it takes to make a penis shudder and stiffen with the experience of its potency is what sexuality means culturally. . . . All this suggests that that which is called sexuality is the dynamic of control by which male dominance . . . eroticizes as man and woman, as identity and pleasure. It is also that which maintains and defines male supremacy as a political system.”
— Catharine MacKinnon, “Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: ‘Pleasure under Patriarchy'” (1989)

“The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist.”
— Sheila Cronan, 1988

“There is no analogue anywhere among subordinated groups of people to this experience of being made for intercourse: for penetration, entry, occupation. . . . Intercourse is a particular reality for women as an inferior class; and it has in it, as part of it, viola­tion of boundaries, taking over, occupation, destruction of privacy, all of which are construed to be normal and also funda­mental to continuing human existence. . . .
“Maybe life is tragic and the God who does not exist made women inferior so that men could fuck us; or maybe we can only know this much for cer­tain — that when intercourse exists and is experienced under conditions of force, fear, or inequality, it destroys in women the will to political freedom; it destroys the love of freedom itself. We become female: occupied; collaborators against each other . . .”
— Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse (1987)

“Men have been creating ideologies and political practices which naturalize female heterosexuality continuously in every culture since the dawns of the patriarchies. . . . Female heterosexuality is not a biological drive or an individual woman’s erotic attraction . . . Female heterosexuality is a set of social institutions and practices.”
— Marilyn Frye, 1992

“Some of the forms by which male power manifests itself are more easily recognizable as enforcing heterosexuality on women than are others. Yet each one . . . adds to the cluster of forces within which women have been convinced that marriage and sexual orientation toward men are inevitable, even if unsatisfying or oppressive components of their lives. . . .
“The assumption that ‘most women are innately heterosexual’ stands as a theoretical and political stumbling block for many women. . . . [T]o acknowledge that for women heterosexuality may not be a ‘preference’ at all but something that has had to be imposed, managed, organized, propagandized and maintained by force is an immense step to take if you consider yourself freely and ‘innately’ heterosexual. Yet the failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness.”
— Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1982)

“Male supremacy is centered on the act of sexual intercourse, justified by heterosexual practice.”
— Sheila Jeffreys, 2005

“I am Female. This means I have a Female reproductive system and am vulnerable to impregnation, like all Females, by Males . . .
“What are the behaviors and roles considered appropriate for one’s sex? . . .
“If you are a Feminist . . . the answer to this should be ‘There are no behaviors and roles considered appropriate for my sex because Females can be and do anything.’
“If you are not a Feminist, your answer might be ‘My role as a women is to be a Wife (fuckhole) and Mother (breeder).'”
— Cathy Brennan, December 2012

You, the regular readers, have seen most or all of these quotes at various times since January, when the conservative blogosphere first erupted in mocking laughter at the feminist who proclaimed, “PIV is always rape, OK?” For most people, that was just a one-day joke — “Was she dropped on her head?” — but because I have studied feminism in some depth over the years, I recognized that, however crazy this poor woman’s anti-heterosexuality screed seemed, it was entirely consistent with radical feminist ideology. And this ideology, rather than bland slogans about “equality,” is what comprises feminism as it is taught to the tens of thousands of college students enrolled in Women’s Studies programs on American campuses.

This explains many things that may otherwise seem mysterious, for example the intolerant vehemence of feminist activists in their hostility toward men, Christianity and the traditional family.

From their point of view — what feminists are taught in Women’s Studies courses — the woman who has a husband and children is being cruelly oppressed by the patriarchy, a conspiratorial apparatus of male supremacy. According to the best available data, about 98% of Americans are heterosexual, yet the expectations of normal parents that their children will also be normal are condemned by feminists as a type of harmful prejudice called heteronormativity.

These core doctrines of radical feminism are not new, nor are these “fringe” beliefs within the feminist movement. The most widely assigned anthology of feminist literature, used as an introductory text in many Women’s Studies programs, is edited by three lesbian professors, and syllabi for Women’s Studies classes routinely include assignments of anti-male/anti-heterosexual writings by such radical authors as Adrienne Rich, Charlotte Bunch, Sheila Jeffreys, Andrea Dworkin, Janice Raymond and Mary Daly.

One cannot effectively oppose an ideology one does not understand. We are in a Culture War that began long ago and far away:

In 1919, Georg Lukacs became Deputy Commissar for Culture in the short-lived Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary. He immediately set plans in motion to de-Christianize Hungary. Reasoning that if Christian sexual ethics could be undermined among children, then both the hated patriarchal family and the Church would be dealt a crippling blow. Lukacs launched a radical sex education program in the schools. Sex lectures were organized and literature handed out which graphically instructed youth in free love (promiscuity) and sexual intercourse while simultaneously encouraging them to deride and reject Christian moral ethics, monogamy, and parental and church authority. All of this was accompanied by a reign of cultural terror perpetrated against parents, priests, and dissenters.

The phenomenon originated by Lukacs, Cultural Marxism, is generally today known as political correctness, and its objective has never changed. The goal is to destroy Christianity, and with it the “bourgeois morality” that Marxists understood as the cultural underpinning of Western democratic capitalist society. Once we understand feminism in the larger context of Cultural Marxism, we recognize that (a) bland slogans like “equality,” “choice” and “progress” are not the actual agenda; (b) the actual agenda involves the wholesale destruction of Western civilization; and (c) the people involved in advancing this agenda are the enemies of all humanity.

It is easy enough to laugh at these people as kooks, but the startling fact is that radical feminists exercise such influence on American university campuses that no one within academia dares oppose them, as was illustrated when Lawrence Summers was hounded out of office as president of Harvard University for merely suggesting that there may be “innate” differences between men and women. The fact that Carmen Rios became an award-winning student leader as a “raging lesbian feminist” in American University’s Women’s Studies program is a rather large clue as to what is being taught in that program. And the fact that Ms. Rios went onto a post-graduate career as communications coordinator for the Feminist Majority Foundation (annual budget $6.5 million) indicates that such radicalism is welcomed within “mainstream” feminism.

Who sponsors the annual Young Feminist Conference in D.C.? The Feminist Majority Foundation. And who was moderator of the conference’s digital communications panel discussion? Carmen Rios. So when college girls want to learn how to promote feminism online, it’s the “raging lesbian feminist” who teaches them.

Why is it a “hit piece” simply to point out that Carmen Rios lives a life consistent with her beliefs? Feminism teaches young women that men are their enemies and that heterosexuality is a weapon of male supremacy. It is therefore impossible to imagine why any woman who subscribes to feminist ideology would be interested in a normal life of men, marriage and motherhood. Even if she were able to reconcile her anti-male belief system with a sexual interest in men, no feminist could ever be happy in such a relationship, even stipulating that any man would be interested in a relationship with her. This impossibility is obvious enough to some:

I was already feminist, had almost perceived that PIV [penis-in-vagina, i.e., normal sexual intercourse] was inherently violent and a way to humiliate women, and that all men wanted was to use us as receptacles for their dicks. So I first thought that if I wanted to date a man, a way to prevent being used by them as their dick-socket to be thrown away the minute after, I’d have to choose one I knew for a long time and could trust he wouldn’t abuse me, had already built an equal, friendly, respectful relationship with him which stood the test of time, and especially, they would have to understand feminism and i should be able to be feminist with them without feeling uncomfortable about it.
Well I very quickly realised that this standard was totally impossible! Once I held this standard for interacting with men, they all disappeared out of my life very quickly. It became obvious that men didn’t want to interact with me or with women in general on an equal level, and that what “attracted” them in women was subordination to them — as soon as we wanted to be their “equals” they were repelled by it, lost interest or tried to thwart the feminist drive in me some way or another. This was a major eye-opener. I’ve said this before in various comments but I found this experience really amazing — just setting the bar high for men made them disappear out of my life.

This was written by Ms. Anti-PIV at her “Radical Wind” blog, and is an accurate portrayal of the implicit logic of feminism: Accepting the core premise that women (collectively) are oppressed by men (collectively), a woman is led to perceive normal relationships with men as characterized by her “subordination,”  as she is “humiliated” and reduced to the status of “dick-socket.” She then makes “equality” the standard by which she judges men; which is to say, she cannot imagine a man who deserves admiration as superior to her in any way. It is impossible for her to “look up” to any man. Indeed, given her description of men — every single one of whom she condemns as abusive, selfish and “inherently violent” — feminism leads her to view males to be decidedly inferior to females. Her “totally impossible” demand of males, to make them suitable as her companions, is that they must accept this hateful verdict against themselves: Men must “understand feminism,” so she will “be able to be feminist with them,” whatever the hell that means.

One might analyze this particular woman’s statements endlessly, or simply dismiss her as insane. It seems impossible for her to accept that there is something defective in her personality, namely her apparent lack of the normal female sex urge. She evidently cannot even imagine the feelings of normal women, who seek male companionship because they genuinely desire and enjoy that experience she coarsely condemns as “being used by [men] as their dick-socket.” She has elsewhere recounted her unfortunate dating history with men, so that we know why she presumes that all women are “used,” then immediately “thrown away” after sex with men. No man has ever genuinely cherished her, nor has any man ever sought her as his permanent life partner.

Yet it is not the peculiar details of her personality and experiences that are truly important in Radical Wind’s testimony. The larger significance is in how her experience (and her analysis of it) conform generally to feminist theory. If indeed women’s condition is one of cruel oppression and unfair subordination, a condition imposed upon them by the selfishness of men, no man can ever possibly be worthy of the admiration and respect of any woman. Male erotic interest in women is, according to feminist ideology, the basic cause of women’s “humiliation” as inferiors. The man who desires a woman as his sexual partner only wishes to subject her to an “inherently violent” act. It’s even worse if a man wants her to be his wife and the mother of his children, thereby seeking to impose on her the cruelest possible fate — a life of despicable servitude as a man’s personal chattel slave, a helpless captive “breeder” forced to devote her life to bearing and caring for a man’s offspring.

Such is the feminist view of men, of heterosexual relationships, of normal marriage and motherhood. If you are a woman who actually desires those things (romance, a wedding, a husband and children, a family home) then you are not a feminist. You may call yourself a “feminist,” but it’s impossible to reconcile a normal female life with the radical project of overthrowing the patriarchy. And if you’re a woman committed to overthrowing patriarchy (i.e., reducing men to the status of passive drones in a sexless androgynous regime of “equality” where men are only acceptable if they display a masochistic appetite for the companionship of women who despise them), it’s impossible to imagine how you could ever experience sexual desire toward whatever pathetic males might choose this fate to which feminism would condemn them.

Thus we return to Carmen Rios, the “raging lesbian feminist” who is not afraid to joke that Women’s Studies classes function as “Lesbo Recruitment 101” seminars for many young women. Her comrades at Autostraddle condemned me for writing a “hit piece” about Ms. Rios, when all I had done was to discuss her career and opinions as a typical example of feminist ideology in operation.

Remember: Autostraddle is a site specifically targeted to a readership of lesbians, so that they clearly don’t believe it is a bad thing for Carmen Rios to be gay. Nor, we presume, do Autostraddle’s contributors consider it a bad thing to be a feminist. What perturbed them, however, was when I noted that Ms. Rios and her employers at the Feminist Majority Foundation are enthusiastic in advocating “sexuality education” aimed at kids “as early as age 10” because “sexuality and gender identity begin emerging between the ages of 10 and 14,” and they think it is important to reach kids while they are “still malleable.”

(Soundtrack cue: Elvis Presley, “Suspicious Minds.”)

“Many of us had sex with boys in our teens and didn’t bang a lady ’til our mid-to-late-twenties, and felt like rookies all over again. So we can understand how you might feel a little better knowing a little something before you take the plunge.
“Female sexuality, let alone queer sexuality, is usually ignored by sex ed programs. Furthermore, whereas many heteros learn about sex together in their early teens, many lesbians don’t start that early and/or aren’t peer socialized into the sexual universe like straights are, not to mention that our entire media culture is structured around and obsessed with heterosexual sex.”
— from Autostraddle.com, Nov. 13, 2011

Let us place this in context, shall we? There is abundant evidence that feminists consider heterosexuality oppressive to women. We are therefore not surprised to learn that lesbian Women’s Studies professors Karin Martin and Emily Kazyak are concerned that Disney cartoons are pressuring girls to become heterosexual. The senior author of that study, Professor Martin, is similarly concerned that mothers are also imposing heteronormativity on girls.

This is all consistent with the doctrines of pioneering lesbian feminist theorists (e.g., Charlotte Bunch and Adrienne Rich) who condemned the idea of heterosexuality as an “innate” or “natural” expression of female sexuality. Equality for women was only possible if they could be liberated from the constraints of what Rich called “compulsory heterosexuality.” What scientists had claimed were “natural” sexual instincts, these eminent feminist writers explained, were actually the product of social pressures and cultural beliefs imposed on women by the system of male supremacy. Daphne Patai has described how feminism theorizes this process:

Dee Graham . . . claims to be able to explain the very existence of heterosexuality in women by invoking what she calls the “Societal Stockholm Syndrome.” In a 1994 book entitled Loving to Survive, Graham expounds her theory in minute detail. As in the famous Stockholm bank-hostage episode in 1973, in which four hostages bonded with their captors anlubd came to see the police as their common enemy, women — so the argument goes — are eternally held hostage  to men. . . . The point of all male behavior is domination . . . Heterosexual behavior thus becomes a “survival strategy” for women, as do “feminine” characteristics, which result from women’s need to ingratiate themselves with their “captors.” . . .
Graham’s thesis makes it impossible to distinguish in a meaningful way between situations of genuine abuse and the ordinary life of heterosexual women. And that is precisely the point. Men are women’s captors. Women are men’s hostages. Heterosexuality is the form of their subjugation.

Rather than letting girls grow up to be heterosexual hostages, then, it makes sense that feminists would seek to rescue them from a future as “dick-sockets” in the captivity of male domination. The overthrow of patriarchy requires the abolition of heterosexuality, and achieving this revolutionary feminist objective cannot rely entirely on lonely housewives watching cable-TV lesbian shows or Texas mothers being seduced by lesbian elementary school teachers. No, the advancement of a radical feminist agenda of equality and liberation requires an active campaign to eradicate the heteronormative oppression of girls while their emerging sexual identity is “still malleable.”

That the logic of feminist theory is obvious in this regard, however, does not mean either (a) that all women who call themselves “feminists” have followed the premises of their syllogism to a logical conclusion, or (b) that all women who understand the esoteric doctrine of feminism are willing to discuss it with the larger public outside the inner circle of their cult. It follows from this — i.e., the necessary disconnect between feminism’s esoteric doctrine and feminism’s exoteric discourse — that there are many women who earnestly support what they believe to be “feminism” without having any knowledge of the etiology and teleology of the movement’s fundamental ideology. Therefore, let us cite a few comments from the Autostraddle reaction to my blog post:

  • What can I say about the state of the world, but: haters gonna hate. Trolls gonna troll. Carmen’s gonna shine because she’s a bright star. And thanks for the “lesbian recruitment”, Autostraddle, without it I’d probably be still in a closet or worse by now. Good stuff, that.
  • Shit, they’re on to us. Everyone knows the first rule of Raging Lesbian Feminist Club is not to talk about Raging Lesbian Feminist Club.
  • I should have stopped at reading the excerpts here. Reading the actual article and the actual commentaries . . . was enraging. Assholes like that are why the world collectively can’t have nice things.
  • Hate filled tripe like this just reinforces the need to teach my high school students to be open minded and to live-and-let-live.
  • Is there a training program for those of us wanting to learn to properly recruit the masses of straight women?
  • I think what saddens me the most, is that I know if the author was offered up explanations, like that feminism does not equal misandry, he would refuse to change his view points. I’m glad that this community exists to counter backwards thinking such as that.

You see? No matter how many influential feminists any critic may cite to demonstrate the anti-male/anti-heterosexual core doctrines of feminist ideology, there are still idiots (useful or otherwise) who insist that “feminism does not equal misandry.” Readers of a popular lesbian blog assert that a critical exegesis of the feminist belief system is “backwards thinking,” despite my careful examination of this doctrine as expressed by leading feminist advocates during the past five decades.

Astonishingly, these idiots claim they are “open minded . . . live-and-let-live,” when Autostraddle refused even to link my post — while I had linked their site multiple times — but instead used a “Do Not Link” site and offered a PDF version of my post. And why? Because it seems they did not want their readers to follow the links and examine the sources I had cited, as they evidently prefer to have their own lesbian readership remain ignorant of feminist theory.

“Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself. … [Truth] is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”
— Thomas Jefferson, “Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom,” 1786

No honest man or woman need fear that lies can triumph over Truth, where the weapons of “free argument and debate” are available, where skilled hands are willing to wield those weapons, courageously fighting error wherever the antagonist may be found.

If I did not shrink from defending truth when sued for $1 million by convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin, does anyone now suppose I intend to retreat from a conflict with Women’s Studies professors or the lesbian blog known as “Cosmo for Queers”?

Various of the commenters at Autostraddle suggested that Carmen Rios’ joke about “Lesbo Recruitment 101” had no basis in truth, and they are free to offer whatever arguments they choose to support that interpretation. But they have not actually made any such argument, instead responding with sarcasm and insults, attributing my own arguments to hateful bigoted ignorance.

Autostraddle will not link me, but I will cheerfully link Autostraddle, for I would not want anyone to be ignorant or fearful.

Perhaps some women do not desire to have their entire hand inside another woman’s vagina, or vice-versa, but “haters gonna hate,” eh? (If you’re not a hater, however, Autostraddle recommends you use lots of lubricant.) Meanwhile . . .

Again, some women have no interest in lesbian sex (with or without strap-ons), but “haters gonna hate.” On the other hand, Autostraddle is there to provide you helpful advice. Their regular Sex Toy columnist is particularly loyal to her Spareparts™ brand harness, and recommends the 8.5-inch long, 2-inch thick Outlaw™ dildo.

Far be it from me to critique the methodology of experts in these matters, and I’m sure the Autostraddle crew is proud to have added to their team of expert contributors the “raging lesbian feminist” Carmen Rios, communications coordinator for the Feminist Majority Foundation.





 

 

THE ‘SEX TROUBLE’ SERIES:

 

Category: Feminism, Sex Trouble

Don’t Mistake Disinterest in Emotionalism for Cowardice, @PatDollard

Posted on | August 15, 2014 | 24 Comments

by Smitty


As a retired veteran with 3 WESTPACs and an Afghan tour to my credit, the accusation of cowardice is more amusing than offensive. On the other hand, rabble rousers who appeal to emotion, instead of calm, prayerful and rational thought, are the ones more likely to get people killed.

If you want to do anything useful, Dollard, understand the Clausewitzian Trinity as it pertains to going to war; it’s as relevant in the political dimension as the Holy Trinity is in the spiritual. There will be no military action of consequence until a leader of the acumen of David Petraeus (but who’s not drawn from such a broad well of disgrace) that can articulate a coherent strategy, win an election on it, and lead 50 states united in the effort.

Allen West comes to mind.

Category: Blogging
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