FMJRA 2.0: Baby, Hold On To Me

It’s been a while since we’ve taken notice of Amanda Marcotte, but the living embodiment of evil has not been idle, nor has she been less ridiculous than usual, it’s just that Trump Derangement Syndrome has produced so much craziness on the Left that Amanda is less obtrusive nowadays. This week, however, Ms. Marcotte wrote a column at Salon-dot-com which she then publicized with an extended Twitter rant:

There are many reasons, no doubt, for the rising worldwide rejection of liberal democracy. But I suspect the biggest reason — and interestingly, the one that tends to be downplayed — is misogyny. It’s an international tantrum in reaction to feminism. . . .
It’s clear to me that a lot of men will choose fascism over feminism.
In sum, men around the world would rather burn down democracy than do the dishes.
I’ll add that I think one reason a lot of liberals, including feminists, downplay the centrality of misogyny to rising fascism is because of liberal sexism. We don’t want to admit that women are important enough to inspire a worldwide rise of fascism.
A lot of people, especially men, on the left want to relegate “women’s issues” to a boutique concern. They can’t allow the thought that women’s issues are actually central concerns that dictate the rise and fall of civilizations.

You can read the rest of that, but the place to begin debunking it is with Ms. Marcotte’s first premise, i.e., that we are witnessing a “worldwide rejection of liberal democracy” and “a worldwide rise of fascism.”

You will have difficulty finding any pundit who asserted such a thing prior to Nov. 8, 2016. America came this close (picture me holding my thumb and forefinger half an inch apart) to the Triumph of Hillary, who would have become President had she not lost a handful of Rust Belt states by quite narrow margins, and yet Hillary’s defeat has been treated by many in the media as a catastrophic omen of incipient fascism.

Quite frankly, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are guilty of believing their own bulls–t. Every four years, the two major parties try to convince Americans that we are facing the Most Important Election in History, a stark choice between Good and Evil. If you’re a Republican who lived through the Obama years, you welcomed Trump’s election as a return to a pro-business agenda in Washington — lower taxes, less regulation, an emphasis on economic growth. Whatever else a Republican might vote for, and whatever else Trump might do, at least we could expect him to act on the basic pro-business sentiment of the GOP, and in this expectation we have not been disappointed. But Democrats have other ideas, and to them Trump’s victory signified the dawn of a new Dark Age, an era of evil worse than anything in all human history.

Ask yourself why we spent more than two years being bombarded with the phony “Russian collusion” narrative. Wasn’t this bizarre conspiracy theory part of the justifying rationale of the #Resistance? If Trump had not been legally elected, but instead had stolen the election from Hillary with the clandestine assistance of nefarious Russians, didn’t this justify the Left in treating Trump’s presidency as illegitimate?

The rioting mobs of masked Antifa thugs were condoned by liberals as an authentic expression of democracy, whereas the man who won the election — 62.9 million votes, and an Electoral College majority of 304-227 — was an enemy of democracy. This weird reversal of reality, where “democracy” is no longer about who wins elections, and where violent street thugs are celebrated as exemplifying liberal values, is symptomatic of many things, but mainly it shows what happens when the media bubble generates a pervasive echo-chamber within which liberals can wallow endlessly in a warm bath of confirmation bias.

“TRUMP IS HITLER! ORANGE MAN BAD!” This was the essential premise upon which Democrats and their media allies constructed an alternative reality in the aftermath of Hillary’s defeat, and viewers of CNN and MSNBC were immersed in that distorted worldview.

As I say, Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter rant this week was publicity for her Salon-dot-com column, which begins thus:

What if the reason democracy is collapsing around the world is because men really don’t want to do the dishes?
That might sound a bit silly, but it was a thought that kept creeping up on me while reading this excellent and thoughtful examination of the rise of anti-liberalism around the globe by Zack Beauchamp at Vox. By “anti-liberalism,” Beauchamp doesn’t mean a rejection of the narrowly defined liberalism of the Democratic Party, but the “school of thought that takes freedom, consent, and autonomy as foundational moral values” that is traditionally understood to have been defined by Enlightenment philosophers, particularly John Locke, and underpins the institution of democracy itself.
As Beauchamp explains, the political compromises necessitated by liberal democracies frustrate radicals on both the left and the right, but especially the right, and so there’s increasing talk — again, mostly on the right — of abandoning liberal democracy and turning to authoritarian governments that will foist radical ideologies on the public, whether they like it or not. Politicians like Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and, yes, Donald Trump of the United States are all hostile to the core values of liberal democracy, Beauchamp argues, which include “democracy, the rule of law, individual rights, and equality.”

Wow. It’s fair to make analogies between Trump and Orban or Bolsonaro, but Erdogan? Is there an opposition in Turkey that supports “the core values of liberal democracy”? Or is it rather the case, as I suspect, that if Erdogan is overthrown, it will be by radical Muslims who don’t give a damn for “democracy, the rule of law, individual rights, and equality”?

To compare Trump to Erdogan is such an apples-and-oranges comparison that it boggles the mind, for in what sense is Turkey like the United States? Yet this is not even the worst idea that Marcotte borrows from Zack Beauchamp, to wit: In what sense does the opposition to Trump — the Democratic Party of the 21st century — represent the Enlightenment values of John Locke, et al.? It’s been a few years since I’ve read Locke, but as I recall, the author of such works as The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina and Two Treatises on Government never wrote a word in favor of legalized abortion, same-sex marriage or banning plastic straws. This objection is relevant, because what Marcotte and Beauchamp are really upset about is not any actual threat to liberal democracy as described by Locke, either here or abroad, but rather Trump’s threat to the policy agenda of the Democratic Party.

Let us not pretend that Amanda Marcotte actually knows anything about Turkey, Hungary or Brazil, or that she actually cares about Turks, Hungarians and Brazilians. Ms. Marcotte is a Democrat, and like all other Democrats, she is committed to maintaining the propaganda claim that Donald Trump is analogous to Hitler, and that all 62.9 million Americans who voted for Trump are a “basket of deplorables.”

Mere partisanship does not a political philosophy make, and anyone who mistakes Amanda Marcotte for a philosopher is a fool. How she dares even to speak of “the rule of law” is astonishing, given her commitment to fictional “rights” found nowhere in our Constitution, but imposed upon the nation in the name of imaginary “penumbras and emanations.”

We can be amused by Ms. Marcotte’s assertion that “fascism” is on the rise, both here and abroad, because men don’t want to wash dishes. But were men washing more dishes under Obama’s presidency? Would men have washed more dishes had Hillary won the election? Is the equitable division of household chores the best measure of “liberal democracy”? Was such a proposition ever entertained by John Locke?

It’s humorous to think so, and I don’t want to argue too strongly against Ms. Marcotte on this point, because I think it might help Trump’s prospects for re-election if men were to be convinced that voting for Trump would permanently exempt them from dishwashing duty.

Welcome to fascism, sweetheart. Now fix me a sandwich.

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 09.13.19

Posted on | September 13, 2019 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Do You Think The Rules Apply To Cops?
EBL: Travel Blogger Jailed In Iran
Twitchy: Ilhan Omar Demands ABC Apologize To AOC For Anti-Socialism Ad And It Goes So Wrong
Louder With Crowder: Beta Comes Clean, Admits He Wants To Take Your AR-15s
According To Hoyt: Massacre, War, & Colonialism
Vox Popoli: Pewdiepie Trolls The ADL, also, Satire Is Dead

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Friday Hawt Chicks & Links – The Problematic Edition
American Greatness: What Do You Mean, “We”?
American Power: Eddie Money, RIP
American Thinker: No Matter Who Wins In 2020, There Will Be Blood
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Relative Poverty Friday
Babalu Blog: Trump Says Bolton Was “Holding Him Back” On Cuba & Venezuela
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For September 13
Camp of the Saints: The Big #Fail & Betrayal II – The War That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Da Tech Guy: Playing It Out Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Red China’s Gotta Eat
First Street Journal: Surprise – Democrats Admit Their “Assault Weapon” Ban Harms Law-Abiding Citizens
The Geller Report: French Firemen Attacked In No-Go Zone With Molotov Cocktails, also, Muslims Sought In Ontario Human Trafficking Investigation
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, My Other AR, also, A Hungry Supermassive Black Hole
Hollywood In Toto: Hustlers Can’t Condemn Drugging & Robbing Wall Street
Joe For America: Anti-Gun Alyssa Milano Admits To Ted Cruz She Owns Two “For Protection”
JustOneMinute: The Dem Debate
Legal Insurrection: Hundreds Of Mumps Cases Reported Among Illegals In 19 States, also, It’s Time For Beta O’Rourke To Drop Out Of The Race
Michelle Malkin: Live From Montgomery County, Maryland – Stop Sanctuary, Stand With ICE, End Open Borders
The PanAm Post: Peru Breaks Up The Lima Group, Refrains From Activating TIAR, also, EU Demonizes Bolsonaro While Sucking Up To Cuban Dictatorship
Power Line: Gen. Flynn Goes On Offensive Against The Deep State, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shark Tank: Trump Closes “Limited” Congressional VA Offices In Florida Hospital
Shot In The Dark: Wages Of Overreach
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – The Crisis In Labour
This Ain’t Hell: From Beto’s Mouth To Your Ears, also, Valor Friday
Victory Girls: Joe Biden Unmasks Comrade Bernie Sanders
Volokh Conspiracy: The Anti-Slavery Constitution
Weasel Zippers: BET Founder Robert Johnson – I Give Trump Credit For Doing Positive Things That Have Helped Blacks, also, Texas State Rep Tells Beto His AR-15 Is Ready If He Comes For It, Gets Suspended From Twitter
Megan McArdle: Treating Uber & Lyft Drivers In California As Employees Isn’t Going To Work
Mark Steyn: Extremist Norms, also, Vinyl Score

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

The Family Business

Posted on | September 13, 2019 | 1 Comment

My podcast partner (and former Kimberlin co-defendant) John Hoge is from an eminent Tennessee family, and some of his cousins are proprietors of Atomic Fireworks, headquartered in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, with retail locations in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Missouri. This company was founded in 1930 by L.W. Loyd, who in 1948 was one of the first U.S. fireworks importers to travel to China, and subsequently made famous the Cherry Bomb and M-80 brand fireworks, both of which are company trademarks.

As regular readers are aware, I am a stone-cold fireworks fanatic. Here’s video of the finale of our family’s July 2019 show:

Considering my good friend John Hoge’s family connections to the fireworks industry, it quite naturally occurred to me that he might be able to impose upon his Tennessee kinfolk for a considerable discount, and I particularly had my eye on their Dixie Dynamite canister shell assortment, a case of which contains 96 shells, and I don’t know what the retail price would be, but kinfolk don’t pay retail prices, do they?

At any rate, Mr. Hoge has promised to renew acquaintances with his Tennessee fireworks cousins the next time he travels down home, and the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Category: Family, Fireworks

In The Mailbox: 09.12.19

Posted on | September 12, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax Sues CBS Over #MeToo Allegations
Twitchy: Alert Mike Pence – Joe Biden Informs Jorge Ramos “I’m The Vice President Of The United States”
Louder With Crowder: TROLLMASTER! Trump Campaign Flies Banner Above Houston During Debate

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Greatness: Federal Prosecutors Ready To Indict Andrew McCabe
American Thinker: Fake News, Fake Polls – CNN Edition
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Random Notes News
Babalu Blog: The Other 9/11 That Freed Chile From Soviet/Cuban Conquest – And Just In Time!
BattleSwarm: SCOTUS Gives Trump A Win In Asylum Rules Case
Camp of the Saints: The Big #Fail & Betrayal
CDR Salamander: Germany, The Weak Sister
Da Tech Guy: Israel’s Jews Mugged By Reality, also, Abortion Is Anti-Life, Anti-Liberty, & Anti-Pursuit Of Happiness
Don Surber: Congress May Rein In Rogue Judges
First Street Journal: The Option Not Taken & The Syrian Civil War
The Geller Report: Facebook Suspends Israeli PM Netanyahu, also, Suit Charges Robert Mueller Helped Saudis Cover Up Their Role In 9/11 Attacks
Hogewash: Don’t Know Much About History, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Hollywood In Toto: Call Tigers Are Not Afraid Guillermo Del Toro Light
Joe For America: One America News Networks Sues Rachel Maddow For $10 Million In Defamation Case
JustOneMinute: Ron Wyden’s New Capital Gains Tax Scheme
Legal Insurrection: Kamala Harris’ Campaign Should Have Ended Tonight, also, Trump Orders Sweeping Crackdown On Homeless Camps In California
The PanAm Post: Entrepreneur Who Profited From Chavismo Buys Epstein’s Jet
Power Line: Showdown In Houston, also, What Spy?
Shark Tank: Wassermann-Schultz Dismisses Former ICE Director’s Testimony As “Bigoted”
Shot In The Dark: The Future Is Orwellian
The Political Hat: Re-Queering The Northern Irish Cake, European Edition
This Ain’t Hell: Police Say El Paso “Hero” Made Up Story, also, Firefighters Outraged Over False Claim
Victory Girls: Five Reasons Blanket Banning Flavored Vape Products Is A Boneheaded Idea
Volokh Conspiracy: Trump’s “War On Immigrants” Doesn’t Stop At Citizenship
Weasel Zippers: New Law Signed By CA Gov Newsom Bans Schools From Suspending Disruptive Kids, also, Marianne Williamson Caught Saying Conservatives Are Nicer To Her Than The Left
Mark Steyn: John Boltin’, also, Venetian Blind Spot

Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Beto in Democrat Debate: ‘Hell Yes, We’re Going to Take Your AR-15, Your AK-47!’

Posted on | September 12, 2019 | Comments Off on Beto in Democrat Debate: ‘Hell Yes, We’re Going to Take Your AR-15, Your AK-47!’

A totalitarian speaks:

2020 presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke broadly endorsed taking certain guns away from Americans, specifically naming AR-15s and AK-47s as weapons that shouldn’t be allowed.
Beto was asked if he supported confiscating guns, which he said he did, qualifying “if it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield.”
“If the high-impact, high-velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that so you would bleed to death on a battlefield and not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers,” he said.
O’Rourke then shared a harrowing story about the shooting in Odessa.
“I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15 and that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour because so many other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa, there weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time,” she said.
“Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” O’Rourke said. “We’re not going to allow it to be used against a fellow American anymore.”

According to the CDC, about 70,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2017, compared to fewer than 18,000 murders. That’s about 192 overdoses a day, most involving illegal drugs. If the government can’t take away everybody’s heroin, how successful do you think they’ll be in taking away everybody’s guns? O’Rourke and other Democrats are advocating a totalitarian measure — the disarmament of the civilian population — as a “solution” to an imaginary problem. Homicide rates have actually declined sharply in the past 25 years at the same time civilian firearms ownership has increased.

If you want to read more about armed self-defense, permit me to recommend the work of my good friend Robert A. Waters. He has written multiple books about such situations, including The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves with a Firearm, and his most recent book, co-authored with his son, Guns and Self-Defense: 23 Inspirational True Crime Stories of Survival with Firearms.

Category: Crime

The Instagram Influencer Grift: What Is Caroline Calloway’s ‘Brand’ Value Now?

Posted on | September 12, 2019 | 3 Comments

Caroline Calloway spending Daddy’s money in Europe, 2013.

Back in January, I told you the story of “Caroline Calloway and the ‘Creativity Workshop’ Influencer Tour From Hell”:

Parlaying a popular Instagram feed (and maybe also a YouTube channel) into a lucrative income is a matter of “branding,” and one of the most popular “brands” of recent years is a young woman named Caroline Calloway. She comes from money. Her parents sent her to an elite boarding school in New Hampshire, and she attended New York University ($69,984 a year, including room and board). In 2013, at age 21, she spent the summer traveling in Europe, meeting good-looking Italian guys, and posting what she hashtagged #adventuregram photos with long storytelling captions. and then in the fall, she went to Cambridge University in England, studying art history and — ZOOM! — she soared to Instagram superstardom.

Based on her Instagram fame, Calloway scored a $500,000 book deal for a memoir at age 24, but failed to deliver the manuscript and then attempted to retrieve her fortunes by organizing a “Creativity Workshop” tour that turned into a disaster nearly as notorious as the Fyre Festival.

Now comes the exclamation mark, in the form of a tell-all article by Calloway’s former NYU classmate Natalie Beach who, it turns out, not only acted as a ghostwriter on Calloway’s #adventuregram posts, but also co-wrote the book proposal that got that $500,000 advance, and tried to help Calloway produce the manuscript before the would-be memoirist proved unwilling to cooperate. As Beach says: “Caroline claimed her failure to write the manuscript was an intentional stand against the patriarchy and a publishing industry that insisted her life story be defined by the men she dated.” Calloway’s failure actually had a lot more to do with her Adderall addiction and her infinite phoniness.

A couple of excerpts from Beach’s account:

It was around this time [2015, at Cambridge University] that Caroline revealed to me that for all these years, she had been lying about her origin story. She hadn’t, in fact, gotten famous from a picture of macarons on Instagram’s favorites page. The real story, she told me, is she took a series of meetings with literary professionals who informed her that no one would buy a memoir from a girl with no claim to fame and no fan base. And so Caroline made one online, taking out ads designed to look like posts to promote her account and buying tens of thousands of followers.

And again:

If it was just money and fame she was after, all she had to do was be quiet and let me do the work. She could have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, gone on the tour she always wanted, and recorded the audiobook in that beguiling voice of hers. But she had to be the one to tell her own life story, even if she couldn’t. Caroline was caught between who she was and who she believed herself to be, which in the end may have been the most relatable thing about her. This is why, when people ask me if Caroline is a scammer, I try to explain that if she is, her first mark is always herself.

Two words: Impostor syndrome.

Caroline Calloway knew she was not who she had made the world believe she was. She had created a public image that was essentially false and, when she was required to commit this image to print — to tell her life story — she experienced an existential crisis. It was one thing to post a photo to Instagram with a clever caption (and editorial assistance from her uncredited helper Natalie), but to compile these scattered vignettes into a narrative and say, “This is my life”? No, she couldn’t do it.

All of this — the Adderall addiction, buying fake followers on Instagram, failing to follow through on her promises — is symptomatic of Caroline Calloway’s narcissistic personality disorder. She was obsessed with creating an image of herself, and used this image to exploit others.

Caroline Calloway’s most recent portrait.

One of the themes in Natalie Beach’s story is how she always felt like the ugly girl in the shadow of Caroline Calloway’s beauty. Some guys might look at Calloway’s photos and say, “Not even an 8,” but keep in mind that in 2013-2015, when she was a rising Instagram star, she was in her early 20s, at her peak SMV. Even a girl who rates no better than a solid 7 can have lots of #adventuregram fun at 21 or 22, if she’s got the requisite combination of nice teeth, perky breasts and Daddy’s money.

Also, well . . . white privilege.

Let me say some things so politically incorrect that Heidi Beirich at the SPLC might find them interesting: Despite all the left-wing demonization of white people that has saturated elite culture in recent years, the Nordic type is still quite a popular commodity in the dating market. A young white person who is generally attractive won’t be lonely, no matter how many academics, journalists and politicians blame them for all the evil in the world. My youngest son — so blond-haired and blue-eyed he could be a poster boy for the Hitlerjugend — is remarkably popular among his peers of all races. While the paranoid prophets of demographic doom obsess over declining white fecundity (“It’s the birth rates,” as the New Zealand shooter proclaimed in his manifesto), life is not so bad for young people who were lucky enough to be born white. Unless you’re a pathetic Beta loser, which my son is not. The doomsayers are misguided, and their fear-based perspective on demographics is not helpful. But I digress . . .

It was easy for Caroline Calloway, a white girl with nice teeth and perky breasts, to enjoy her #adventuregram life and even get a book deal from a major publisher for a memoir at age 24. She’d just finished college and, like so many upper-middle-class white girls, had the cushion of Daddy’s money to support her Instagram celebrity dream life. That’s the dirty little secret behind so many of these victim-of-the-patriarchy types: They’re really just spoiled brats — Daddy’s Little Princess, grumbling because she’s not treated with the deference to which she considers herself entitled by birth. Remember that Caroline Calloway’s parents were willing to spend $70,000 a year to send her to NYU, send her to Europe for a summer and then send her to Cambridge for grad school! And yet somehow she still thinks she’s oppressed?

Her reaction to Natalie Beach’s story was typically narcissistic. Last month, apparently aware that Beach was working on a tell-all, Calloway wrote a piece for Refinery 29 making fun of how her failed “Creativity Workshop” tour had given her a reputation as a scammer. One could read into that an attempt to “get ahead of the story” by pretending she felt no real embarrassment about her failures, and therefore who cares?

In fact, however, she cared very deeply, as became clear after Calloway got a call from a fact-checker and completely freaked out. Her Instagram feed turned into a frenetic spin machine as she tried to turn the story around and rescue what remained of her precious image. Natalie Beach’s story generated more headlines, not flattering to Calloway:

Caroline Calloway, her “one-woman Fyre Fest,”
and her ex-best friend Natalie, explained
— Vox

Caroline Calloway’s ex-best friend Natalie Beach
has published a story about all her scams
— Cosmopolitan

Who is Caroline Calloway, and why can’t
the internet stop talking about her?
— Guardian

Who Is Caroline Calloway? Natalie Beach,
Influencer’s Ghostwriter, Claims
Instagram Star Bought Followers
— Newsweek

You can go check out Caroline Calloway’s Instagram feed to see how she’s still desperately trying to rescue her “brand” from the wreckage.

It’s possible to fake your way to success — what do the Kardashians actually do, that anyone should want to “keep up” with them? — but the key to such a money-for-nothing scam is to prevent your audience from getting wise to the total bogusness of your scam. Caroline Calloway has left enough bridges burning behind her that she isn’t likely to get many new opportunities to cash in on whatever value her “brand” still has.

UPDATE: Rotten Chesnuts weighs in:

I know this kind of girl well, quite simply, because she’s every single college girl in America. I’m retired now, praise Buddha, but in my career I must’ve had ten thousand Caroline Calloways pass through my classroom. It’s important that we get to know them, because they are, quite literally, our future.
And yeah, before you ask — they’re ALL like that. Why do you think I took early retirement? . . .
Caroline Calloway is a cute, rich girl who wasn’t satisfied with being cute and rich. She wanted to be famous, too, and so she set about constructing an online identity for herself. . . .
As incredible as this is, chicks care about this bulls–t. “Educated” women, with fancy degrees from big-league schools, writing for posh media outlets in the cultural capital of the world. The rights and wrongs of it don’t matter, because the answer is: “Who cares?” Whether she’s a lunatic scammer, or merely a lunatic, doesn’t matter at all. She’s toxic, and any sane person would change zip codes to avoid her.

Read the whole thing — it’s excellent, and also depressing.