The Other McCain

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

Obama Was Really the Smart One

Posted on | February 8, 2020 | Comments Off on Obama Was Really the Smart One

During the Obama era, there was a lot of noise about why his student record at Columbia University and Harvard Law was off-limits. Some conservative complaints about the secrecy surrounding Obama’s transcripts may have been intended to suggest he wasn’t all that bright — a beneficiary of Ivy League “diversity” initiatives or whatever. My hunch, however, was that Obama’s transcripts, in terms of the courses and professors he chose, might have given some indication of his early radicalism. At any rate, I avoided impugning Obama’s intelligence not because I feared the accusation of racism — like my friend Barbara Espinosa often said, “I’m not racist; I hate his white half, too!” — but simply because he didn’t seem at all stupid to me.

Arrogant? Yes, but not stupid. In his official public appearances, Obama generally avoided anything that would make him seem too much of a radical extremist. Knowing it would be difficult to persuade middle-class white voters to elect a black man with a Kenyan name, Obama shrewdly recognized that being a Jesse Jackson-style rabble-rouser was not going to get him to the White House. Instead, he maintained a low-key demeanor that inspired the nickname “No Drama Obama.”

Hillary Clinton? Not so smart. Obama didn’t play the race card much — he knew he didn’t have to, as his race was obvious enough — but Hillary and her allies deliberately played the gender card to such an extent that people got fed up with that “First Woman President” business. And the Clintons habitually overestimated their popularity. Most people have forgotten that Bill Clinton got only 43% of the vote in 1992, and in 1996, he still got only 49% — less than a majority of the popular vote. While Hillary did get a popular-vote majority, her support was unusually concentrated in deep-blue Democrat strongholds like California, Illinois and New York, whereas Obama got much broader support.

In the aftermath of Hillary’s 2016 defeat, her allies resorted to the “Russian collusion” hoax to explain how she lost, and have kept pushing that narrative even after the Mueller investigation failed to find evidence to support their conspiracy theory. Now, after trying to revive that hoax as the “UkraineGate” justification for impeachment, and failing again, Democrats have become completely deranged. Their 2020 presidential candidates are kooky, as James Carville complains:

“We just had an election in 2018. We did great. We talked about everything we needed to talk about and we won,” he said in a Vox interview published on Friday. “And now it’s like we’re losing our damn minds. Someone’s got to step their game up here.” . . .
“They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen,” he said when asked if the party moved too far left. . . .
According to Carville, both Sanders and Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., were pushing “stupid” ideas about higher education.
“Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this s–t. And you saw Warren confronted by an angry voter over this. It’s just not a winning message,” he said. . . .
At one point, Carville took aim at a New York Times writer, who posted a “snarky tweet” about Louisiana State University (LSU) — Carville’s alma mater.
“You know how f—–g patronizing that is to people in the South or in the middle of the country? First, LSU has an unusually high graduation rate, but that’s not the point. It’s the goddamn smugness. This is from a guy who lives in New York and serves on the Times editorial board and there’s not a single person he knows that doesn’t pat him on the back for that kind of tweet. He’s so f—–g smart.
“[Binyamin] Appelbaum doesn’t speak for the Democratic Party, but he does represent the urbanist mindset,” he said. “We can’t win the Senate by looking down at people. The Democratic Party has to drive a narrative that doesn’t give off vapors that we’re smarter than everyone or culturally arrogant.”

One of the smartest things you can do in politics is to play dumb. It is better to let your opponents underestimate you than to act as if you believe you’re superior to ordinary voters. James Carville understands that. Obama understood that. Does any other Democrat understand it?




 

Category: Democrats

Ed Driscoll Misses the Lead

Posted on | February 8, 2020 | 4 Comments

 

Did you know that the European Union is funding a Communist insurgency in the Philippines? Did you know that more environmental activists were killed in the Philippines than in any other country?

I didn’t know this either, but Ed Driscoll linked an article with the headline, “The climate movement is overwhelmingly white. So I walked away.” And I read that article by Karin Louise Hermes, a mixed-race (German-Filipina) activist who complains about being treated as a token by her fellow Greens in Germany. That’s an interesting angle, but way down in the story, I spotted this paragraph:

In recent years, the Philippines has had the highest number of environmental defenders murdered, where arrests and disappearances have been attributed to combating “communist insurgency.” Targeted groups include the Filipino research NGO I volunteered with during the UN climate conference in Bonn, Germany, and the Filipino women’s collective Gabriela, which I also worked with in Berlin before I stepped back.

Whoa! This is news, and I don’t know how Ed Driscoll missed it, except maybe he was in such a hurry that he didn’t read the whole article.

Communists in the Philippines? A news article from March 2019:

The Philippine government has asked the European Union and Belgium to cut funding for certain groups the Duterte administration alleges are “fronts” of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA).
Posing this plea to European officials was among the objectives of the February 17 to 20 visit of military and Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) officials to Bosnia, Switzerland, and Belgium.
Brigadier General Antonio Parlade Jr, among the members of the delegation, said they asked the EU and the Belgian Foreign Ministry to stop financing around 30 groups claiming their funds are being used to fuel terroristic acts by the CPP-NPA.
“Maybe with the large amount they are getting, the insurgency we wish to end will be prolonged,” Parlade said in Filipino in a Palace press briefing on Wednesday, March 13.
Parlade claimed that the Rural Missionaries of the Philippines (RMP) was among these CPP fronts receiving EU and Belgian funding. He described it as a group of nuns who supposedly “radicalize” children. . . .
Parlade claimed the EU had released P32 million to the RMP in December 2018 and is set to release another 2 million euros this year.
The Belgian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, supposedly said it was providing funds to 7 Belgian groups who work with groups the military says are CPP-NPA fronts. Among these groups are RMP, Ibon Foundation, Karapatan, and Alcadev (Alternative Learming Center for Agricultural and Livelihood Development).
According to Parlade, Belgium has been providing 3 million euros for 5 years to the 7 groups.
The EU and Belgian officials were supposedly “surprised” to hear they were funding supposed “fronts” of the “terrorist” CPP-NPA, said Undersecretary Severo Catura. Catura is the executive director of the Presidential Human Rights Committee Secretariat.

Yes, of course, the Belgians are up to their eyeballs in this subversive activity, funding Communist front groups in the Philippines. But the thing is, until I read that article yesterday, I had no idea that the Philippines was dealing with a Communist insurgency. Here’s a report from last month:

Anti-communist groups, local government units and other non-government organizations denounced the violence and atrocities committed by the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front (CPP-NPA-NDF) and its allies as they staged a rally on Wednesday outside the Mendiola Peace Arc in Manila.
Julius Ursua, League of Parents of the Philippines (LPP) and Liga Independencia Pilipinas member, said protesters marched from the University of Santo Tomas going to Mendiola Peace Arc to condemn the alleged recruitment of minors by the leftist organizations and the killings of the innocent individuals.
The groups also expressed support to Angela Aguilar, a former CPP cadre, after she filed a petition before the poll body in April last year to revoke the registration of members of the Makabayan bloc.
“We are here to call for peace. The long-term violence brought by the communist groups and its allies is too much. We want to end terrorism to achieve a lasting peace because the future generation deserves it,” he added.

Communists! Recruiting minors! Committing violence and atrocities! And the Commies are being bankrolled by the European Union?

How has Fox News missed this story? Why isn’t Rush Limbaugh on it? And what about all those murdered environmentalists?

In 2018, 30 land and environmental defenders were killed in the Philippines, making it the country with the highest number of such killings in the world. As our new investigation shows, despite his election promises, Duterte’s administration is leaving defenders at the mercy of corporate greed.
Mining, agribusiness, logging and coal plants are driving attacks against environmental activists — with household brands such as Del Monte Philippines and Dole Philippines, and Filipino giants like San Miguel Corporation linked to local partners accused of attacks and murders of protestors.
Upon becoming President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte promised to safeguard the country’s rural and indigenous communities, tackle corruption, and protect the environment. Yet our research shows how Duterte has categorically failed to keep these promises, allowing business to continue as usual. And in the Philippines, this means business at all costs. Our report documents a trashing of indigenous rights, endemic corruption, and continued environmental damage — all with impunity
Furthermore, we show how internationally recognised firms including Del Monte Philippines, San Miguel Corporation, Standard Chartered, Dole Philippines, and the World Bank are connected to attacks against defenders through their business activities in the Philippines.

Oh, “corporate greed,” huh? Would it be too much of a stretch to speculate that these “environmental activists” are actually Communists? Because, really, what’s the agenda of environmentalism? In a country where you have a Communist insurgency, on the one hand, and environmentalists getting murdered on the other hand, it’s not a conspiracy theory to suspect there must be some kind of connection.  The Philippines are a U.S. ally, a nation of more than 100 million people, and I apologize for neglecting them so long until Ed Driscoll’s link brought this situation to my attention. What can Wikipedia tell us about this?

Rodrigo Roa Duterte . . . is a Filipino politician who is the 16th and incumbent President of the Philippines . . . He is the chairperson of PDP–Laban, the ruling political party. Duterte took office . . . on June 30, 2016 . . .
He . . . was a prosecutor for Davao City, before becoming vice mayor and, subsequently, mayor of the city in the wake of the Philippine Revolution of 1986. Duterte won seven terms and served as mayor of Davao for over 22 years.
Frequently described as a populist and a nationalist, Duterte’s political success has been aided by his vocal support for the extrajudicial killing of drug users and other criminals. Human rights groups have documented over 1,400 killings allegedly by death squads operating in Davao between 1998 and May 2016 . . . A 2009 report by the Philippine Commission on Human Rights confirmed the “systematic practice of extrajudicial killings” by the Davao Death Squad.

Ooh! “Death squads”!

It all makes sense now. The Philippines needed somebody to deal with a Communist insurgency, and so they elected the guy who has expressed “vocal support for . . . extrajudicial killing,” because when it comes to getting rid of Commies, you’re gonna need some “death squads.” And if a few environmental protesters start causing trouble . . .

Look, I’m all about the Rule of Law, due process, etc., but things always get messy when you’re dealing with Communist insurgents. Filipinos have been trying to get rid of these Commies for decades, so if they finally got frustrated enough to elect Mayor Death Squad as president, can you really blame them? Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe we can send some American environmental activists to the Philippines to . . . uh, investigate “human rights” under the Duterte government. Let these campus Antifa types see what real fascism looks like, and if some of them fall afoul of Duterte’s “death squads,” well, that would be bad.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!




 

Category: Environmentalism, Philippines

In The Mailbox: 02.07.20

Posted on | February 7, 2020 | 2 Comments

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Germany’s War On Gold
EBL: Trump Acquitted
Twitchy: Occasional Cortex, Omar, & Pressley Become The Butt Of Their Own Joke About Being Radicals
Louder With Crowder: Leftist Student Loses His Mind At Trump Acquittal News
According To Hoyt: Socialism & The Democratic Dictatorship
Vox Popoli: Okay, That Would Be Bad, also, Fake Impeachment Fail

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Friday Hawt Chicks & Links – The Donald Edition
American Conservative: Seattle’s Liberal Reckoning
American Greatness: The Political Genius Behind Trump’s SOTU Theatrics, also, Starbucks Coffee Campaign Promotes Sex Change For Teens
American Power: The Big Winner Of Impeachment – Partisanship
American Thinker: Global Warming’s 50 Years Of Fraud
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Divestment Friday
Babalu Blog: Hundreds Of Chinese Remain Stranded In Cuba Because of Coronavirus
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For February 7 
Cafe Hayek: ECON 101 Teaches Humility
CDR Salamander: Even In The Most Autocratic Nations, You Can Find Heroes
Da Tech Guy: Donald Trump & Discovering The Third Book Of Reagan
Don Surber: Highlights Of The News
First Street Journal: Saira Sameera Rao Respects All Races Equally…
Fred On Everything:
The Geller Report: Trump Admin Kills Two More Of The World’s Worst Jihadis, also, #JeSuisMila
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of The Day, also, The Art Of Computer Programming
Hollywood In Toto: Birds of Prey Keeps Its Feisty Feminism On A Leash
JustOneMinute: Don’t Stop Smiling (Unless You Start Laughing)
Legal Insurrection: Van Jones Hits The Panic Button, also, Another One Bites The Dust
The PanAm Post: We Had A Deal
Power Line: Virtue Signaling Carries A Cost, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shark Tank: DeSantis Signs Parental Consent Abortion Bill
Shot In The Dark: Watching The Ivy League Go Full-On Toxic Weed
The Political Hat: Pushing Back Against The Transgender Agenda – Banning Trans Surgery For Juveniles, Quitting Over Violence Against Actual Women, & An Honest Voice, also, Firing Line Friday: Extremism
This Ain’t Hell: Valor Friday, also, Man Offers Burger For Sex, Gets Neither
Victory Girls: Democrats Have The Worst Week Ever
Volokh Conspiracy: Elizabeth Warren Slanders AIPAC
Weasel Zippers: Joe Walsh Drops Out, Would Rather Help A Socialist Win Than Have A “Dictator”, also, LTC Vindman & Twin Brother Escorted Out Of White House, Reassigned
Mark Steyn: Live Around The Planet

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

‘Blank-Slate Equalism’

Posted on | February 7, 2020 | 1 Comment

“Equality as a moral or political imperative, pursued as an end in itself — Equality, with the capital ‘E’ — is the antonym of every legitimate conservative principle.”
— M.E. Bradford, 1976

Readers know that I’ve recommended Rollo Tomassi’s book The Rational Male as the basic text of a “Red Pill” understanding of male-female differences, and I make that recommendation knowing that many will find some aspects of Rollo’s worldview offensive. Of course, it’s impossible to find anyone who ever agrees with me 100% — no two people ever have exactly the same opinions — but Rollo deserves credit for his willingness to criticize directly the errors of egalitarianism. As I’ve been saying for more than a decade, insofar as men and women are different, they are not equal, because equality implies fungibility, i.e., that one can be substituted for the other without loss of value.

Why is this obvious truth so difficult for some people to accept? In this video, you’ll find Rollo discussing with Rich Cooper how our culture is influenced by what he calls “blank-slate equalism.”

 

If you’ll watch the video, you’ll see that Rollo recommends Steven Pinker’s 2002 bestseller The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Here is an excerpt from that book:

Our theory of human nature is the wellspring of much in our lives. We consult it when we want to persuade or threaten, inform or deceive. It advises us on how to nurture our marriages, bring up our children, and control our own behavior. Its assumptions about learning drive our educational policy; its assumptions about motivation drive our policies on economics, law, and crime. And because it delineates what people can achieve easily, what they can achieve only with sacrifice or pain, and what they cannot achieve at all, it affects our values: what we believe we can reasonably strive for as individuals and as a society. Rival theories of human nature are entwined in different ways of life and different political systems, and have been a source of much conflict over the course of history. . . .
Bertrand Russell wrote, “Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.” For intellectuals today, many of those convictions are about psychology and social relations. I will refer to those convictions as the Blank Slate: the idea that the human mind has no inherent structure and can be inscribed at will by society or ourselves.
That theory of human nature — namely, that it barely exists — is the topic of this book. Just as religions contain a theory of human nature, so theories of human nature take on some of the functions of religion, and the Blank Slate has become the secular religion of modern intellectual life. It is seen as a source of values, so the fact that it is based on a miracle — a complex mind arising out of nothing — is not held against it. Challenges to the doctrine from skeptics and scientists have plunged some believers into a crisis of faith and have led others to mount the kinds of bitter attacks ordinarily aimed at heretics and infidels.

As a description of egalitarianism’s influence in our culture, “the secular religion of modern intellectual life” is dead on-target, and I’ve been among the “heretics and infidels” for more than 20 years.

The dogma of egalitarianism, its denial of human nature, has the effect of devaluing the actual differences between us, as if we all are (and should be) identical cookie-cutter replicas of each other. This is absurd and insulting, but if you try to argue against this “secular religion,” you’ll find yourself accused of hate. Instead of denying such an accusation — trying to convince your liberal accuser how much you agree with his egalitarian worldview — you might wish to try asking, “Why?” To say that a Norwegian is different than a Nigerian does not imply hatred of either, nor are you guilty of hate (“misogyny”) for saying that men and women are different. The amazing thing, of course, is that the typical Nigerian is more likely to agree with me than to agree with the liberal because, like me, the Nigerian is typically more traditional than modern.

Liberalism is the political shadow of modernism, and the conservative must acknowledge that his belief system involves loyalty to ancient values that existed long before the Industrial Revolution.




 

Category: The Red Pill

Trump Does Impeachment Victory Dance, Slams Democrats, Media as Liars

Posted on | February 7, 2020 | 2 Comments

Like he just won the Super Bowl:

President Trump, commanding a triumphant scene at the White House complete with the playing of “Hail to the Chief,” railed against what he called an “evil” impeachment process on Thursday hours after his historic acquittal in the Senate.
Greeted by thunderous applause and a standing ovation by his supporters, the president declared “we went through hell” but described the moment as a “celebration” — while maintaining as he did throughout the impeachment inquiry and trial that he “did nothing wrong.”
And on a day when he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were trading shots in deeply personal terms, Trump turned fire on those who prosecuted the case and other investigations against him. He called Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff “horrible” and “vicious” people.
“It was evil. It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars. This should never, ever happen to another president, ever,” Trump said. “It was a disgrace.”
He detailed the timeline of investigations, remarking of the Russia probe: “It was all bulls—.”
And as he did earlier Thursday at a prayer breakfast, Trump brandished a copy of the day’s Washington Post with a blaring headline: “Trump acquitted.”
“We can take that home, honey. Maybe we’ll frame it,” he joked to first lady Melania Trump, saying that it was the “best” headline he’s ever received from the outlet.

 

When Trump called Pelosi a “horrible person,” do you think any white working-class “swing” voter in Michigan or Iowa disagreed? It cannot be repeated enough that Trump’s approval rating went up during this impeachment, which Democrats ought to see as a foreboding omen. Despite everything that the liberal media did to incite this impeachment — frankly, they’ve been working on it since Nov. 8, 2016 — the American people could still see through this partisan hoax. Guess which Democrat sees what’s coming down the road? James Carville:

Democratic strategist James Carville expressed his concerns as the Democratic primary race is officially underway, saying he’s “scared to death” of the direction his party is going.
Appearing on MSNBC, Carville began by pointing to the success Democrats had during the 2018 midterm elections and stressed that it “matters” who the candidates are and what the party chooses to talk about.
“I’m 75 years old, why am I here doing this? Because I’m scared to death, that’s why,” Carville exclaimed. “Let’s get relevant here … all the Sanders people are taking pictures wishing Jeremy Corbyn the best. … I don’t want to go down that path.” . ..
“We’ve got to decide what we want to be. Do we want to be an ideological cult? Or do we want to have a majoritarian instinct to be a majority party?” Carville continued. “What we need is power, you understand? That’s what this is about. Without power, you have nothing. You just have talking points.”
Carville . . . insisted that Democratic donors “will not give a popsicle to the DNC” with the current state of the 2020 field.

Trump Derangement Syndrome — a psychiatric disorder rooted in a refusal to accept the verdict of the 2016 election — has put the Democrats so badly off-balance they cannot recover their equilibrium.




 

Category: Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi

$300 by 5 p.m.

Posted on | February 7, 2020 | Comments Off on $300 by 5 p.m.

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is, my wife and I went to get our taxes done Thursday, and we’ll be getting a refund next week. The bad news is, the cable bill is $300 and I’ve got to have that paid by 5 p.m. today or I won’t have Internet access. So while the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is in sight, there is a short-term emergency, and so I’m compelled yet again to rattle the tip jar. Regular readers know how this crowdfunding thing works — if 100 readers give $3 each, or 20 readers give $15 each — the arithmetic works either way. So whatever amount you can afford — $5, $10, $20 — would be appreciated.

PayPal doesn’t provide a tax form, so when we were getting ready to go see the tax preparer, I had to go through pages of last year’s transactions, adding up the totals. It was interesting to see the patterns. For weeks at a time, the contributions came irregularly, but then suddenly — BOOM! — there would be a day or two where the receipts totaled $500 or more, and I was trying to remember what caused those surges.

One such surge was when I went down to cover Marianne Williamson’s campaign in South Carolina, and another was when I went to Orlando for the “Red Pill” conference. So tax time for me is like a walk down Memory Lane, visiting the pleasant Ghosts of Tip-Jar Rattles Past, recalling that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

UPDATE: The cable company got their money, and I’ll be taking my brother out to dinner later. Thanks to all who contributed.




 

Category: Shoe Leather Fund

In The Mailbox: 02.06.20

Posted on | February 6, 2020 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.06.20

– compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Chicago’s Recipe For More Crime
EBL: Rush Limbaugh’s Producer Bo Snerdley Calls Out CNN & Jim Acosta
Twitchy: Senator Hirono Tells Wolf Blitzer President Trump Was NOT Acquitted
Louder With Crowder: Pro Wrestler (And Mayor) Glenn Jacobs Savages Rep. Tim Ryan Over SOTU Walkout
Vox Popoli: Soros is Not Buying The Best & Brightest, also, Now They’re Trying The Gay One

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Get Everything In Writing 
American Conservative: In Pete Buttigieg, The Establishment Finds Its Man
American Greatness: C-Span Viewers Express Disgust With Dems Over SOTU Antics, also, Romney’s Discreditable, Dishonest Vote
American Thinker: Nancy’s Fake Fire Alarm
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Hobbit News
Babalu Blog: Do The Democrats Really Want To Nominate A Communist?
BattleSwarm: Iowa Caucuses Reloaded – FULL METAL MAYHEM
Cafe Hayek: Some Links
Camp Of The Saints: Ruination, Corruption, & Lies – Victor Davis Hanson Gets It
CDR Salamander: Just A Retired 2xFOS’d LCDR, Eh?
Da Tech Guy: Unfinished Business Under The Fedora, also, The Massachusetts Senate Wants To Turn This State Into California
Don Surber: Romney’s Political Suicide
First Street Journal: The Deeply Principled Mitt Romney
Fred On Everything: China & America – Scoping Out The Megacepts
The Geller Report: Al Qaeda Leader Came To America As Refugee, Applied For Disability, also, Jewish UC Berkeley Students Threatened With Violence
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Some Interesting (And Snarky) Questions
Hollywood In Toto: Rogan – Netflix Censors Comics For Unwoke Jokes
JustOneMinute: Send Better Fixers
Legal Insurrection: Trump Takes Victory Lap At White House Event, also, Leftist Media In Complete Meltdown After Trump’s Acquittal Speech
The PanAm Post: Why Venezuela Needs To Completely Abandon Socialism
Power Line: A Liberal Gets Trump’s SOTU Address, also, Our Long National Nightmare Is Over
Shark Tank: Bryan Donalds Slams Florida Democrats Over Opposition To School Choice
Shot In The Dark: Happy Reagan’s Birthday!
The Political Hat: You Don’t Have To be Responsible To Vote
This Ain’t Hell: Fred Emmert – Fake Combat Vet, Fake SeaBee/BM/Special Boat Operator, also, Army Reservists Accused Of Scamming Marines
Victory Girls: Rush Award Triggers Gals of The View
Volokh Conspiracy:  Today In Supreme Court History
Weasel Zippers: Rep. Mike Johnson Offers Pelosi Some Acquittal Pens To Pass Around, also, Pelosi Accused Trump Of Being On Drugs – Has She Checked Herself Lately?
Mark Steyn: Ripping Up & Melting Down

Amazon Warehouse Deals




Category: Linkagery

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Are ‘Incels’ Now a ‘Domestic Terrorism Threat’?

Posted on | February 6, 2020 | Comments Off on Crazy People Are Dangerous: Are ‘Incels’ Now a ‘Domestic Terrorism Threat’?

 

Most people have never heard of Brian Clyde because, unlike some other crazy people, when the 22-year-old Texas resident decided to go on a mass-murder rampage, his “body count” didn’t include any innocent victims. Wearing tactical gear and wielding a rifle, Clyde opened fire on the federal courthouse in Dallas last June and was promptly killed by return fire from law-enforcement authorities. At the time, some media attention was paid to Clyde’s “bizarre posts on a Facebook page” in which he warned that “the f—ing storm is coming,” but because his rampage didn’t produce a high “body count,” the story disappeared. I never even heard of this guy until this morning when I saw it in a footnote on Page 47 of a recent report on domestic terrorism by the Texas Department of Public Safety (TDPS). Page 3 of that report:

Although not a new movement, Involuntary Celibates (Incels) are an emerging domestic terrorism threat as current adherents demonstrate marked acts or threats of violence in furtherance of their social grievance. Once viewed as a criminal threat by many law enforcement authorities, Incels are now seen as a growing domestic terrorism concern due to the ideological nature of recent Incel attacks internationally, nationwide, and in Texas. What begins as a personal grievance due to perceived rejection by women may morph into allegiance to, and attempts to further, an Incel Rebellion. The result has thrust the Incel movement into the realm of domestic terrorism. The violence demonstrated by Incels in the past decade, coupled with extremely violent online rhetoric, suggests this particular threat could soon match, or potentially eclipse, the level of lethalness demonstrated by other domestic terrorism types. . . .
[Page 29] Involuntary celibate (Incel) [domestic terrorists] blame women and society for their failure to develop intimate relationships. Many advocate the use of violence against persons, both women and men, they perceive to be successfully engaging in such relationships. Following a mass shooting attack by Elliott Rodger in 2014, many Incels praise him as the “Supreme Gentleman” and support the idea of similar attacks, sometimes called an “Incel Rebellion.”113 Incels utilize symbology in their communications, particularly in language. They refer to attractive women as “Staceys” and unattractive women as “Beckys.” “Chads” (alpha males) are men perceived as desirable to attractive women.

The TDPS report then lists a number of incel-related attacks, beginning with Clyde’s June attack on the Dallas federal courthouse, and the footnote directed me to this Texas Monthly article:

Clyde’s social media presence was similar to that of a number of mass shooters. He shared memes that contained references to “incels,” a subculture of men who declare themselves “involuntarily celibate” and who have proven themselves capable of mass violence in places like Isla Vista, California, Toronto, and Parkland, Florida. He referenced Alex Jones and “Hollywood pedophiles,” attacked Hillary Clinton, and was comfortable with swastikas and confederate flags. A week before he went to the federal courthouse, he posted a video declaring “the storm is coming,” a phrase popular among the QAnon conspiracy theorists. He referenced the sort of memes that were popular on sites like 4chan, where users employ nihilistic humor and obscure references — a body pillow featuring anime characters, for example, is a reference that “normies” who live outside of the subculture are unlikely to pick up.
In other words, Clyde was immersed in the same sort of radicalized online culture as a lot of other mass shooters. . . .
There’s no clear trail when it comes to Clyde. Unlike a number of shooters, he didn’t pen a lengthy manifesto before he left home for the final time. If he posted on the anonymous 4chan message boards — which, based on the memes he enjoyed, seems possible — no one has yet connected the activity there to his real-world identity. . . .
The incel subculture is built specifically around the idea that some men are too undesirable to fit with society, and it encourages men who identify with the group to take their frustration out on women. The Isla Vista shooter, who described himself as a “supreme gentleman” in videos before his attack, is a meme among the group, referenced with the same are-they-serious tone by both trolls at home and people who are about to commit mass murder. None of it, the incel doctrine says, is worth taking seriously. Instead, incels urge one another to get a “high score” with the veneer of irony that says that nothing matters — not their own lives, not the lives of others, not even actually going through with an attack. It’s not the dark seduction of someone being urged to commit violence in the name of a cause so much as it’s the constant one-upping of a dare, where men who were drawn to the community out of a sense of worthlessness challenge each other to prove otherwise, never really expecting that they will. . . .
Brian Clyde’s family doesn’t know how he ended up radicalized, masked, and armed, firing shots at a federal courthouse before his death. We do know that in 2016, Clyde’s half-brother called the FBI to warn that Clyde was “suicidal and had a fascination with guns.” In the lead-up to the shooting, Clyde posted incel memes about a “Chad rampage” and a “virgin shooting,” but despite his mental health history and the infatuation with toxic online culture, the family says they didn’t see it coming. In a statement released shortly after the shooting, they said, “We don’t understand any more than anyone else why he chose to do what he did, but we are very thankful that there was no other loss of life.”

Everybody who writes about this keeps returning to two themes:

  1. Online “incel” forums;
    and
  2. Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger.

 

As mass-murderers go, however, “the Supreme Gentleman” really didn’t get much of a body count. Rodger “killed six people and injured fourteen others near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, before killing himself inside his vehicle.” Three of the people Rodger murdered were his male roommates, Weihan Wang, Cheng Yuan Hong and George Chen, who were all stabbed to death in their apartment about three hours before Rodger began driving around near the UCSB campus, using three 9mm pistols to shoot people more or less randomly. As bad as that was, Rodger killed fewer than half the number who died in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre (13 killed, 21 wounded) where there was no apparent motive other than nihilism and revenge.

Of course, Rodger’s rampage could have been much worse, since he actually intended to target a sorority house, but nobody answered when he knocked on the door. The reason Rodger continues to be cited is because of his 107,000-word manifesto, “My Twisted World.”

Because it was 2014, when feminist influence surging in the long lead-up to Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign, Rodger’s crime prompted what I called a cultural “Rashomon”:

The focus on “pickup artist” (PUA) culture as an influence on Roger is probably misguided. As his manifesto makes clear, the Creepy Little Weirdo had been overwhelmed by resentment and a sense of failure since he was in middle school, and he didn’t start ranting on PUA forums until after he had already decided on his “Day of Retribution.” So he acquired from PUA culture a jargon (“Alpha males,” etc.) but this was not the source of his anger, nor did it exercise a determining influence on his actions.

A political significance was imputed to Rodger’s action because feminists wanted to make him a political symbol, a sort of scarecrow figure to incite anti-male fear and loathing. There is no evidence that he was inspired to murder people because of anything he read on the Internet. His motive was rooted in his own social and psychiatric problems, and he merely used jargon borrowed from the “manosphere” in describing his plight. Consider what a friend of his father’s wrote:

“I first met [Rodger] when he was aged eight or nine and I could see then that there was something wrong with him. I’m not a psychologist, but looking back now he strikes me as someone who was broken from the moment of conception … You were hoping that inside there was a normal kid wanting to come out — that he would overcome his shyness and bloom in some way. What became evident, only after reading the manifesto and watching that video, was that what he was actually hiding was this horribly twisted little monster.”

So from age 8 or 9, a family acquaintance noticed “there was something wrong with” Elliot Rodger, who was “broken” in such a way that it seemed to be a congenital flaw, an innate defect, something that went wrong before he was ever born. It is misleading to suggest that Rodger was “radicalized” by anything he read on the Internet, when there is abundant testimony to his psychiatric problems, for which he was prescribed medication that he refused to take. Psychotic rage is not a political philosophy, but feminists wanted to make Elliot Rodger a symbol, and so the Isla Vista killer took on a larger-than-life significance. Since then, of course, the Creepy Little Weirdo has inspired copycats who actually do seem to think of themselves as part of some kind of radical movement. What is their “cause”? Avoiding responsibility for their own personal problems by scapegoating “enemies,” as if (a) some random sorority girl is to blame because (b) Elliot Rodger couldn’t get laid.

As irrational as such a belief is, it’s not less rational than Democrats who see “racism” as the universal explanation for everything wrong. That is to say, insofar as the “incel movement” exists (other than just a bunch of losers whining on obscure web forums), it seems to be heterosexual guys adopting a liberal victimhood mentality, as if they imagine they have a “civil right” to sex with cute sorority girls. To describe this as a “terrorist threat” is to inflate a comparative handful of violent lunatics into something equivalent to Al-Qaeda, with Elliot Rodger in the role of Osama bin Laden, I guess. But according to Very Serious People at Georgetown University, we should be afraid:

 

The incel ideology is real — and lethal. In the deadliest incel-linked attack to date, in April 2018, 10 pedestrians were killed in a vehicle-ramming attack on Toronto’s busy Yonge Street. Other deadly attacks that have cited incel ideology or inspiration have occurred at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, in October 2015; Aztec High School in Aztec, New Mexico, in December 2017; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018; and the Tallahassee Hot Yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida, in November 2019. The death toll in the United States and Canada now stands at nearly 50 people.

What? Some of those attacks had no connection to “incel” ideology. The Aztec High School shooter was William Edward Atchison, who frequented Internet forums under a variety of pseudonyms, expressing his fanboy admiration for school shooters. For example, he referred to the Columbine massacre as “LOLumbine.” And the astonishing thing is that Atchison was actually questioned by the FBI in 2016:

“It’s a shame he wasn’t on our radar,” San Juan County Sheriff Ken Christesen told Fox News [in December 2017]. “I don’t think he had anything so much as a traffic ticket.”
And yet online, the 21-year-old New Mexico resident lived a prolific life as a white supremacist, pro-Trump meme peddler who was most known for his obsession with school shooters. For a half-decade, Atchison spent most of his days online, repeatedly posting threats of violence and cries for help.
When users saw posts from Atchison, who went by dozens of names like “Adam Lanza” and “Future Mass Shooter” on both larger platforms like YouTube and racist communities like The Daily Stormer, they would often ask how his manifesto was going.
Despite local law enforcement’s claims that he wasn’t a known threat, and a visit from the FBI in 2016, Atchison spent most of the last half-decade glorifying school shooters on alt-right websites and posting plaintive appeals for help in fixing his life, according to hundreds of posts analyzed by The Daily Beast. . . .
That shocking content brought the FBI to Atchison’s door in 2016.
Acting on a tip that Atchison had posted a comment on a gaming forum asking users where he could get “a cheap assault rifle” for a mass shooting, the FBI interviewed him and his family, and ultimately determined that no crime had been committed and closed the investigation.
“He was cooperative,” Albuquerque FBI Special Agent Terry Wade said at a press conference last week. “He told us that he enjoyed trolling on the internet.
“The agents specifically asked him if he had plans about conducting attacks and expressed the seriousness that we take these type of things. He assured us that he had no such plans,” Wade said.

The idea of that story, of course, is to make Atchison a “right-wing” figure, as if everyone who registers to vote as a Republican should be viewed a potential mass-murderer, but where’s the “incel” connection? Apparently, every sadsack loser is now counted as an “incel”:

Atchison outlines his floundering career and social life in rural New Mexico. He applied to fast-food restaurants and dollar stores and was rejected. He hadn’t had friends since childhood, when two people took advantage of him after he loaned them video-game consoles that were sold or weren’t given back.
He had a 3.5 GPA, he said, but dropped out in 10th grade because of anxiety and the “backwards as hell” culture at school. He says he tried to go back but dropped out again, citing his abusive family.
He called his father a “fat lazy idiot who watches fox news all day” and his mother “a psycho hillbilly drunk from florida who’s really mentally ill.”

Does this sound like your typical Republican voter? I think not. More to the point, however, is that the only apparent connection between this guy and “incel ideology” is that he was a friendless loser. The fact that he celebrated violence online with enough earnestness to merit a visit from the FBI — well, that’s something, but it’s not something organized enough to be called an “ideology.” It’s more like a pathology.

Parental incompetence is deeply implicated in the lives of these losers. If your mother is a “psycho hillbilly drunk,” as Atchison said, your prospects in life might not be encouraging, and in so many cases like this, the murderer’s family seems to be clueless about (or indifferent to) their child’s abnormal development. Exactly what do the Very Serious People at Georgetown University prescribe as a solution to “America’s Newest Domestic Terrorism Threat”?

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the incel movement’s mobilization to violence is that there are no obvious legal measures or counterterrorism intelligence initiatives available. The movement is completely decentralized, without any hierarchy or leaders, and therefore no targetable offline organizing or funding streams. . . .
Moreover, the fact that, as Berger notes, many incels themselves claim to be suffering from psychological issues such as depression or evidence some degree of autism suggests the need for more proactive intervention from therapists and other mental health professionals.

Translation: “We don’t have a f***ing clue what to do.”

How about getting parents to pay attention? How about directly addressing the real issue, what I’ve called the “Blaze of Glory” fantasy?

These losers feel insignificant, invisible. They have no real-life friends, because they’re losers and nobody wants to be friends with a loser. So they find some dingy malodorous corner of the Internet populated entirely by losers, places where no responsible adult would waste their time, and they . . . well, “commiserate” isn’t exactly the right word. It’s more like they reinforce each other’s anti-social tendencies, the way fat “genderqueer” girls do on Tumblr feminist blogs.

In a universe where there are billions of people on the Internet, it’s not surprising that there are forums with hundreds of useless geeks who think mass murder is excellent entertainment. And some small percentage of those might actually decide to commit such an atrocity.

“I’m going to be somebody” — that’s the psychology involved, a desire to achieve significance by going out in blaze of glory. Unlike the Muslim jihadi, who believes he can help bring about the caliphate by murdering infidels, the “incel” loser doesn’t have any real goal when he decides to go on a rampage; the people he kills generally have nothing to do with his problems; he doesn’t have any “cause” to promote; his chief objective is self-destruction. He is on a suicide mission, seeking to die in the most public manner possible, to gain attention in death by racking up the maximum number of kills before he dies, either by suicide or by a policeman’s return fire: “You can’t ignore me now!”

Call them what they are: LOSERS.

The heart of the issue is that these losers refuse to accept personal responsibility for their own failure, instead externalizing blame on scapegoats — William Atchison blaming his parents and his “backwards as hell” high school, as a typical example. Somewhere in their childhood, these losers were not properly disciplined, not taught to eschew self-pity, and instead were permitted to believe they were victims of others’ unfairness, setting up a vicious cycle. If everybody else is to blame for your unpopularity, this relieves you of the burden of self-improvement. No need to break yourself of bad habits, or acquire any useful skills — you’re a victim, helpless in a world of unfairness where no matter what you do, nothing ever goes right. It’s a defeatist mentality, but losers like this often engage in compensating rationalizations, imagining that the reason they are unpopular is because they are so superior to those around them. By the time they reach adulthood, this mindset — a hardened shell of arrogance protecting their damaged ego — has become a core component of their personality. “The Supreme Gentleman!”

All of my suffering on this world has been at the hands of humanity, particularly women.
It has made me realize just how brutal and twisted humanity is as a species. All I ever wanted was to fit in and live a happy life amongst humanity, but I was cast out and rejected, forced to endure an existence of loneliness and insignificance, all because the females of the human species were incapable of seeing the value in me.
This is the story of how I, Elliot Rodger, came to be. This is the story of my entire life. It is a dark story of sadness, anger, and hatred. It is a story of a war against cruel injustice. In this magnificent story, I will . . .

Yeah, whatever, dude. You’re just a loser who blames other people — the entirety of “humanity . . . as a species”! — for your personal failure.

That such losers could be categorized as a “Domestic Terrorist Threat” is to give them a significance they don’t really deserve. And if you wanted to solve the problem (insofar as it can be solved), you might take a long, hard look at the lack of male teachers in elementary schools. Maybe assign a couple of sports coaches to supervise a 45-minute period of rigorous physical exercise for boys every day. Beginning in fourth or fifth grade, no more “recess,” instead they’re going to be running wind sprints and doing push-ups. Teach ’em how to swing a baseball bat, throw a football and dribble a basketball. And for God’s sake, teach them to stop feeling sorry for themselves. Boys need to develop the kind of mental toughness that has no room for self-pity, otherwise they’re doomed.




 

Category: Crime, Terrorism
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