The Other McCain

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

‘The Idioms of Non-Argument’

Posted on | October 18, 2018 | 1 Comment

Harvard-educated totalitarian Moira Weigel.

Longtime readers know I’ve never been a fan of Conor Friedersdorf, who made himself obnoxious by his pro-Obama “conservatism” circa 2008. Friedersdorf’s basic problem is excessive sincerity — he was guilty of “insufficient cynicism,” as I said, and seemed to be engaged in a campaign to obtain the Most Serious Intellectual Award. While he’s still never cracked a joke during the entirety of his journalism career, Friedersdorf has in recent months turned his critical focus on the Left and its increasingly totalitarian tendencies. For example, left-wing extremist Moira Weigel wrote a “review” of the new book by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, which was not actually a review, but rather a partisan propaganda attack on the authors. Although neither Haidt nor Lukianoff identifies as a conservative, their book has been endorsed by many conservative critics of the campus Thought Police regime in academia. This has made them demonized Enemies of the People in the eyes of far-left ideologues like Ms. Weigel, a Harvard-educated feminist with a Ph.D.

Friedersdorf notes that Ms. Weigel’s “review” is an exercise in bad-faith rhetoric, full of guilt-by-association smears like this:

Hints of elective affinities between elite liberalism and the “alt-right” have been evident for a while now. The famous essay that Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos wrote in 2016, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” cites Haidt approvingly. At one point Lukianoff and Haidt rehearse a narrative about Herbert Marcuse that has been a staple of white nationalist conspiracy theories about “cultural Marxism” for decades.
Nassim Taleb, whose book Antifragile Haidt and Lukianoff credit with one of their core beliefs and cite repeatedly as inspiration, is a fixture of the far right “manosphere” that gathers on Reddit/pol and returnofkings.com.
The commonality raises questions about the proximity of their enthusiasm for CBT [cognitive behavior therapy] to the vogue for “Stoic” self-help in the Red Pill community, founded on the principle that it is men, rather than women, who are oppressed by society.

Notice how Ms. Weigel puts scare-quotes around “cultural Marxism,” as if no such thing could possibly exist although, as a matter of fact, it is quite easy to trace a direct line from the identity politics of today’s intolerant Left back to the so-called “New Left” of the 1960s, and thus to Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci and, ultimately, to György Lukács and Bela Kun. Ms. Weigel deliberately (and falsely) associates the term with “white nationalist conspiracy theories” as if David Horowitz or Roger Kimball could be lumped in with a bunch of crackpot tinfoil-hat Jew-haters. But even the so-called “alt-right” writers Ms. Weigel names in this passage — Allum Bokhari, Milo Yiannopoulo anid Nassim Taleb — don’t fit within the description of promoters of “white nationalist conspiracy theories.” Friedersdorf points out that Ms. Weigel indulges in such tendentious mischaracterizations as this: “Enjoying the luxury of living free from discrimination and domination, [Lukianoff and Haidt] therefore insist that the crises moving young people to action are all in their heads” (emphasis added).

This is a variation on “kafkatrapping.” The first (and unstated) premise of Ms. Weigel’s syllogism is that everyone who is not a white male lives a life defined by “discrimination and domination”; all females and non-whites are victims of oppression, categorically. Because Lukianoff and Haidt are white males, the second premise of Ms. Weigel’s syllogism is that they have the “luxury” of living in a world entirely unlike the world within which the oppressed victims live. Ergo, the conclusion of Ms. Weigel’s syllogism: Nothing that Lukianoff and Haidt say has any validity; everything said by white males is false.

Of course, the moment you point out what Ms. Weigel is doing — i.e., dehumanizing entire categories of people, in quite the same way Stalin dehumanized the kulaks — she will deny the accusation, and assert that your objections to her insulting rhetoric are proof that you are a racist, sexist homophobe who wants to kill 6 million Jews. To criticize or disagree with a leftist is to become literally Hitler.

Any intelligent student of history sees the irony: Treating anyone suspected of pro-Trump sentiments as if they were crypto-Nazis, and thus a menace to democratic pluralism, Ms. Weigel adopts a totalitarian mentality that endorses suppressing the civil liberties of those who do not share her rabid anti-Trump mania. Her dishonest smears of Lukianoff and Haidt function as a justification for silencing them.

The other irony is that Moira Weigel is enormously privileged. The daughter of a Harvard-educated lawyer who made his fortune on Wall Street, she attended Harvard herself and married the scion of a political dynasty, her Harvard-educated husband being the son of two Carter administration officials. The perversity of this born-rich girl claiming to know that less-privileged people enjoy “the luxury of living free from discrimination and domination” simply because they are white males is the sort of insult that we grubby proles are expected not to notice.

 

“Don’t piss down my back and tell me it’s raining” — do not insult my intelligence by pretending you don’t know you’re screwing me over.

Well, I started off intending to praise Conor Friedsdorf for his article and went off on a wild tangent, but nobody would ever nominate me for the Most Serious Intellectual Award, so I don’t bother trying to compete. Guess I’m just another white guy in the basket of deplorables . . .

(Hat-tip: Robert Shibley at Instapundit.)



 

 

Category: Intellectuals, Journalism

Notorious Moonbat Mike Stark Arrested for Attacking GOP Campaign Staffer

Posted on | October 18, 2018 | Comments Off on Notorious Moonbat Mike Stark Arrested for Attacking GOP Campaign Staffer

 

Circa 2006, there was no left-wing moonbat more notorious than Mike Stark, who organized hoax callers to harass conservative radio shows and stalked George Allen’s Senate campaign in Virginia. Stark has no skill as a writer (or anything else) that would recommend his services, but was an aggressive nuisance who specialized in harassing people. Now he has finally gotten the national notoriety he deserves:

A Democratic operative for American Bridge 21st Century, a group founded by David Brock and funded by liberal billionaire George Soros, was arrested Tuesday after the female campaign manager for Nevada GOP gubernatorial nominee Adam Laxalt accused the operative of grabbing and yanking her arm and refusing to let go.
Kristin Davison and other officials for the Nevada attorney general’s campaign said the “battery” left her “terrified and traumatized” — and with bruises on her neck and arms.
“Politics is a little bit aggressive these days, but this is just insane. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Davison, 31, told Fox News on Wednesday.
According to the Laxalt campaign and local law enforcement, Wilfred Michael Stark III, 50, was arrested by the Las Vegas City Marshals on Tuesday evening and remains in custody in the Las Vegas city jail.

Mike Stark is a bad person. Keep him in jail, where he belongs.

UPDATE: Last October, during the gubernatorial campaign in Virginia, Mike Stark was arrested at a Halloween parade in Annandale, where he was “reporting” on Republican candidate Ed Gillespie, after police say he shouted obscenities and engaged in disorderly conduct.

 

 

Category: Crime, Democrats, Nevada

In The Mailbox: 10.17.18

Posted on | October 17, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 10.17.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box – Episode #411
EBL: National Pasta Day 2018
Twitchy: Restaurant Owner Called Nazi Sympathizer For Renting Room To Marsha Blackburn
Louder With Crowder: TIME Article Defending Fauxcahontas Is Proof Of #FakeNews

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Civil War We Might Have To Have
American Power: The NPC Meme Is The Best! also, CNBC Poll – Don’t Expect Big Blue Wave In November
American Thinker: Gosnell – The Serial Killer The Media Ignore
Animal Magnetism: Hunting Season Totty III
BattleSwarm: The Onion On Bobby Francis
Camp Of The Saints: I Have A Few Questions…
CDR Salamander: The Dark And Costly Underside Of Unmanned Systems
Da Tech Guy: Everything NeverTrump Touches Is Destroyed, Stormy Daniels Edition
Don Surber: The Resistance Is Futile
Dustbury: No More Wish Books
First Street Journal: Vote Like Your Rights Depend Upon It
The Geller Report: Germany – Muslim Migrant Douses Hostage With Gas, Straps Bomb To Her, also, WordPress Is Shadowbanning Conservative Sites
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Unintended Victims
JustOneMinute: We Conquer Fear AGAIN!
Legal Insurrection: Two MN GOP Candidates Assaulted In Separate Incidents, also, Why Won’t Fauxcahontas Apologize To Native Americans?
Michelle Malkin: Sinking Sleaze-Bob Menendez
The PanAm Post: US, Israel, & Colombia Seek Maduro Front Man With Hezbollah Ties
Power Line: Democratic Mobs, Then & Now, also, This Morning From Gaza
Shark Tank: South FL GOP – Hold Maduro Regime Responsible For Fernando Alban’s Death
Shot In The Dark: Epidemic Of Mildness
The Jawa Report: Meanwhile In Somalia
The Political Hat: Unqueering The Northern Irish Cake
This Ain’t Hell: Army Moves To Hollow Point Ammo, also, Another Bit Of Embarrassment To Explain
Victory Girls: Treasury Official Arrested & Charged With Leaking Info On Russia, Manafort
Weasel Zippers: Trump Nominates Openly Gay Conservative To Federal Appeals Court, also, Beta O’Rourke Caught In Lie About “Lifelong Republican Mom” During Debate
Mark Steyn: Hoser Reefer Madness!


Featured Digital Deals
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Coupons

Category: Linkagery

‘Transgender’ as Self-Harm

Posted on | October 17, 2018 | Comments Off on ‘Transgender’ as Self-Harm

 

Maddy is a fat girl with a self-harm problem. You can see on the photo above the scars on her arms from repeatedly cutting herself. While she provides little information on her Tumblr blog that would enable us to understand the sources of her mental health problems, we know that many adolescent girls struggle with body-image issues, including eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, and that there is an epidemic of depression and anxiety among teenage girls and young women. Many observers have noted a correlation between mental illness and excessive use of social media, although we can’t say which of these is cause and which is effect. That is to say, it may be that some kids develop psychiatric problems because they spend too much time on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, etc., or it may be that kids with psychiatric problems are somehow predisposed to excessive online usage, perhaps as an escape from unpleasant real-world social environments.

Whatever cause-and-effect relationship may exist between these two phenomena, certainly it is not therapeutic for the lonely fat girl to spend all her spare time locked in her room browsing Instagram profiles or reblogging gloom-and-doom messages on Tumblr. There is an observable tendency of young people to form online cliques or “affinity groups” based on shared interests, and the lonely fat girl with suicidal tendencies can easily find similarly situated peers on social media, thus submerging herself in a virtual world where the prevalent attitudes and beliefs are defined by lonely fat girls, where unhealthy minds define the norm.

Toxic environments attract toxic people with toxic ideas. Especially among impressionable and emotionally vulnerable young people, the existence of online communities full of like-minded peers can encourage an echo-chamber effect, a sort of cult mentality, where those who criticize the group consensus are excluded and demonized. This is how online transgender activism fosters Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) in which teenagers — especially girls — who have never previously exhibited gender confusion rather suddenly become obsessed with pursuing “transition,” typically demanding that parents accept their newfound identity and approve them for hormone treatment and/or surgery to “confirm” their identity. This has become alarmingly common.

In November 2014, Maddy created a Tumblr blog announcing that she identified as “genderqueer and pansexual” and would be “getting top surgery” (i.e., double mastectomy) within two months. She was 19 then, and had previously blogged about her depression and self-harm.

WARNING: You cannot unsee this photo. Read more

Category: The Transgender Cult

As ‘Blue Wave’ Collapses, Desperate Democrat Denounced by Women

Posted on | October 17, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Democrat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp voted against confirming Justice Kavanaugh, and her poll numbers in North Dakota, which had never been very good, took a sharp turn for the worse. It appears that most voters in North Dakota don’t share Sen. Heitkamp’s anti-male ideology and the desperate Democrat has now made her problems even worse:

In her zeal to use the #MeToo movement against her Republican opponent, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s (D-ND) campaign placed an ad purporting to be from victims of sexual assault calling out challenger Kevin Cramer for being insensitive.
But several of the women named in the ad say they did not consent to having their name used in this manner, and at least one says she isn’t even a victim.
The ad, which ran in several North Dakota newspapers including the Bismarck Tribune and the Wahpeton Daily News, was framed as an “open letter” to Rep. Cramer, criticizing his comments that the #MeToo movement was “a movement toward victimization.”
“We are here to let you know that we have all suffered from domestic violence, sexual assault, or rape — and that yes, we expect somebody to believe us when we say it,” the letter states. A disclaimer that this was paid for by the Heitkamp for Senate campaign is featured at the bottom of the letter.
Shortly after the ad ran, women who say they were named as signers began posting on Facebook that the campaign did not have their permission to publish their information. . . .
One woman posted in a Facebook group . . . . that not only did she not give permission for her name to be used by the campaign, but that she doesn’t support Heitkamp and is not even a domestic abuse survivor.
“This was posted in the Bismarck Tribune,” The woman says in her post, which contained a photo of the ad. “A lot of these people listed, including me, did not give anyone permission for our names to be posted. I don’t even support Heidi Heitkamp and I am not a domestic abuse survivor. Should this even be legal?? Using people’s names as part of your campaign??”
Another woman said the campaign was “literally sharing false information.” She wrote a response to the campaign saying she “NEVER gave my consent or permission, written or verbal, to be involved in anything like this: for, against, or personally affected.” She also said some of the names are spelled wrong and that some are listed twice.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Heitkamp looks set to lose a seat Democrat have held since 1960 and why? Because in the post-Obama era, Democrats have made identity politics the sole basis of their electoral appeal. Democrats are the anti-white party and the anti-male party. Common-sense people outside the coastal urban bubbles reject this ideology of hatred, and yet the more they register their opposition to the Democrat agenda, the more the Democrats double down. If you opposed the dishonest smear campaign against Justice Kavanaugh, you’re a “rape apologist,” guilty of defending “white male privilege.” The possibility that Christine Blasey Ford was lying (which is what the preponderance of evidence indicates) was automatically excluded from discussion, and anyone who argued on behalf of due-process rights was accused of “misogyny.” In essence, Democrats made the Kavanaugh hearings a referendum on radical feminist ideology, and were shocked they lost.

Prospects for a Democrat “blue wave” on Nov. 6 are looking increasingly dim, and even the New York Times is becoming skeptical:

The fight over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court seems to have contributed to polarizing the electorate, helping Republicans gain in red states and districts even as Democrats cement their strong position elsewhere. The trend might fade, but if it holds it will be an abrupt change from earlier polls and last year’s special election results, which indicated that Democrats were highly competitive in red areas.
Instead, the district and state polling raises the possibility of an election more like last year’s Virginia elections or the 2010 midterm elections. Both were strong results for the party out of power — but the big numbers came mainly on home turf. A similar result this year would tend to lock the Democrats into their single biggest disadvantage: the map.
The Democratic geographic disadvantage is so severe that it gives the Republicans a chance to survive a so-called wave election, like the 1994, 2006 and 2010 elections that flipped control of the House.

Remember this when you look at the so-called “generic” congressional polls: Currently, Democrats enjoy an advantage of about 7 points on the generic ballot question, but much of that margin involves voters in deep-blue urban districts — New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, etc. — represented in Congress by Democrats. While billionaires like Tom Steyer and George Soros are pouring tens of millions of dollars into campaigns to flip GOP-held House seats, voters in Kansas or Kentucky aren’t automatically going to switch from Republican to Democrat because of attack ads on TV. Common-sense voters are smart enough to understand that no matter how “moderate” the Democrat candidate in their district may try to seem, a vote for Democrats is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and the left-wing mobs that tried to destroy Brett Kavanaugh.



 

Category: Democrats, Election, North Dakota

In The Mailbox: 10.16.18

Posted on | October 16, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Welcome Bob Belvedere & The Camp of the Saints to the list!

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Sen. Claire McCaskill Thinks Her Constituents Are Rubes
Twitchy: Slate Tries To Rescue Fauxcahontas From Pouncing Conservatives, Faceplants Instead
Louder With Crowder: Top Ten Hilarious Reactions To Sen. Warren’s DNA Test Results

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Nobody Must Suffer The Awfulness Of The Feel Bads
American Thinker: Dr. Ford’s Willfully Tangled Web
Animal Magnetism: Hunting Season Totty II
BattleSwarm: Google Introduces New Room 101 App In China, also, Dangerous Flooding Along The Llano River
Camp Of The Saints: The Coming Calamity, also, On Pocahonky’s DNA And The Bigger Issue
CDR Salamander: Shock Early – But Not Often
Da Tech Guy: Gates Dreams Of An Africa Without Africans, also, Twitter Responses Under The Fedora
Don Surber: Salena Zito Sees A Red Wave
Dustbury: A Shot Or Two Of Barbasol
First Street Journal: An Incomplete Report From The Archdiocese Of Washington
The Geller Report: Hate Charges Dropped Against Muslim Who Brutally Beat Hasidic Jew In Brooklyn, also, GOP Candidate For MN House Punched In The Face
Hogewash: In Other Lawfare News, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
JustOneMinute: Is Avenatti Getting Sick Of Winning Yet?
Legal Insurrection: Warren DNA Test Response To Trump’s Mocking Solidifies Her Brand As A Fake, also, Prof Offers Students Extra Credit For Attending Democrat Campaign Event
The PanAm Post: Twenty “Ladies In White” Arrested For Public Prayer In Cuba As Regime’s Persecution Exposed
Power Line: Sinema/Ellison 2020, also, Political Violence Comes To Minnesota
Shark Tank: Mayor Gillum Lies About Florida’s Economy, Unemployment Rate
Shot In The Dark: Tag It & Bag It
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – The SALT Cap & The Quest For Trump’s Tax Returns
The Jawa Report: Well, F*ck Me A Running
The Political Hat: Euthanizing Kids Without Parents Knowing
This Ain’t Hell: Trump Signs “Right To Try” Legislation For Experimental Medicines, also, “Mr. Secretary, Are You A Democrat?”
Victory Girls: Roseanne Deleted – Five Reasons Not To Watch The Conners, also, NYT Leaker Wolfe Pleads Guilty
Weasel Zippers: Orrin Hatch Trolls Fauxcahontas – He’s The Same % T-Rex As She Is Indian, also, FBI Raids Municipal Offices In San Juan Puerto Rico
Megan McArdle: Will The Blue Wave Collapse Before It Reaches The Shore?
Mark Steyn: Questioned To Death, also, How Now, Pow Wow Chow?


Featured Digital Deals
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Amazon Renewed – Certified Refurbs

Category: Linkagery

Why I Still Twitter

Posted on | October 16, 2018 | 1 Comment

by Smitty

The sheer blarney of it all:

Category: Uncategorized

New Jersey ‘Rape Culture’: Democrat Says She Was Raped by Governor’s Aide

Posted on | October 16, 2018 | 1 Comment

Al Alvarez (left) allegedly raped Katie Brennan (right) in 2017.

Everybody involved in this story is a Democrat:

The woman who accused a senior staffer in Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration of sexually assaulting her while he worked for Murphy’s campaign last year is a state official who says she is now telling her story because she has “received no justice.”
Katie Brennan, who later volunteered for the campaign and is now the chief of staff at the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, detailed her allegations against Albert J. Alvarez publicly for the first time in a story published by the Wall Street Journal on Sunday afternoon.
After the report was published Sunday afternoon, Brennan said in a statement: “On April 8th, 2017, Al Alvarez raped me. On April 9th, 2017 I learned that the system is broken.”
“I have pursued every form of justice available,” Brennan, 31, of Jersey City, continued. “But it has become clear that this system is not built for survivors.”
Brennan said she “decided to come forward because I know that Al Alvarez, and all perpetrators, must be held accountable, must never rape again, and the justice system needs a complete change with regard to sexual violence.” . . .
Multiple media outlets . . . published reports this week citing anonymous sources saying Alvarez faced allegations of sexual assault while he worked as director of Latin and Muslim outreach for Murphy’s campaign in April 2017. Alvarez, 44, of Wood-Ridge, was never charged with a crime.
Alvarez, a fellow Democrat, later worked as deputy of personnel for Murphy’s transition team and then as chief of staff of the New Jersey Schools Development Authority under Murphy’s administration. He resigned Oct. 2, the same day the Journal contacted him seeking comment.

Look, I’d argue that Alvarez has the right to be presumed innocent, but Democrats have been lecturing us that we must #BelieveWomen. If Democrats are raping Democrats in New Jersey, this is a good argument for women to avoid Democrats, or maybe just avoid New Jersey.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

 

Category: Democrats, New Jersey, Violence Against Women
« go back — keep looking »