The Other McCain

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

‘The Notion of the Mythical Norm’

Posted on | May 13, 2018 | 2 Comments

Catt is a 19-year-old lesbian with a Tumblr blog. She has anxiety, depression and “also maybe some psychotic symptoms.” She seems to be enrolled in an introductory Women’s Studies course, because she posted an excerpt from a popular textbook, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions:

Often we tend to think of women in comparison to a mythical norm: White, middle-class, heterosexual, abled, thin, and a young adult, which is normalized or taken for granted such that we often forget that Whites are racialized and men are gendered. Asking the question “Different from what?” reveals how difference gets constructed against what people think of as “normal.” “Normality” tends to reflect the identities of those in power.
It is important to recognize that the meanings associated with differences are socially constructed. These social constructions would not be problematic were they not created against the notion of the mythical norm. Being a lesbian would not be a “difference” that invoked cultural resistance if it were not for compulsory heterosexuality, the notion that everyone should be heterosexual and have relationships with the opposite sex.

It’s rather disconcerting to be told that my wife and daughters are “mythical” and that the existence of white middle-class women is inherently “problematic” because of “social construction.” (Yes, I know this is a misreading of the text, but try to imagine a mentally ill 19-year-old college girl trying to make sense of that stuff, OK?) This particular textbook is edited by two professors at Oregon State University and costs $99 on Amazon, where it is currently ranked #6 among bestselling Gender Studies textbooks. It is commonly assigned as a required text in introductory level university classes, e.g., “Introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies,” at the University of Pittsburgh, and “Introduction to Women’s Studies” at the University of Maryland.

 

The excerpt of Women’s Voices, Feminist Vision quoted above is from Chapter 2, “Systems of Privilege and Inequality in Women’s Lives” (p, 59) which begins by telling students that one of the universal conditions that all women share is “being victims of male violence.” Furthermore, Professors Shaw and Lee assure students, women are victimized by “cultural expectations” imposed by “power in society” and, after learning “how privilege and discrimination operate,” students will encounter “suggestions for change in both personal and social lives.”

What young women are being taught on university campuses, basically, is that it is wrong to be white, middle-class, heterosexual, etc., because to be such a person is to be guilty of unjust “privilege.” The very idea of being normal is “mythical,” “socially constructed” and “problematic.”

Do parents know what their children are being taught? Are taxpayers aware that universities are teaching young people an ideology that condemns civilization, per se, as “Systems of Privilege and Inequality”?

It should be obvious, after all, that there can be no civilization without laws, customs and social norms reflecting a hierarchy of values. Historically, attempts to remake society according to egalitarian ideology have had catastrophic results — the Reign of Terror in France, Stalinism in the Soviet Union, the Cultural Revolution in China, the “Killing Fields” in Cambodia — on and on, down to the present-day mess in Venezuela.

By attacking “mythical” norms as tools of an oppressive system of “privilege,” the authors of Women’s Voices, Feminist Vision are indoctrinating students with a destructive radical ideology.

Does anyone believe that the mental health of a 19-year-old will be improved by such indoctrination? Do you think these lessons will do anything to help students succeed in the 21st-century workplace? Or do you suppose that the main goal of university Women’s Studies programs is to train women as political activists for the Democrat Party?

 

Category: Education, Sex Trouble

The Anti-American Party

Posted on | May 13, 2018 | 1 Comment

Do Democrats even understand how bad this looks?

Two former Obama administration officials suggested that America’s European allies should punish President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the Iran deal and levying additional sanctions on the Islamic republic.
The European Union and individual European countries are obligated to take aggressive steps to preserve the Iran deal, in order to avoid becoming Trump’s “doormat,” Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson argued in an op-ed that ran in The New York Times Thursday. Both Simon and Stevenson were directors on former President Barack Obama’s National Security Council (NSC).
“The European Union could, for instance, announce the withdrawal of member-states’ ambassadors from the United States. Isn’t this what states do when diplomatic partners breach solemn agreements, expose them to security risks and threaten to wreak havoc on their economies? That is, after all, what the administration is threatening to do by courting the risk of a Middle Eastern war and applying secondary sanctions to European companies,” they argued. “Depending on the American response, European capitals might even follow up with expulsion of American ambassadors.”

In order to defend a bad deal negotiated by President Obama, they are advocating hostile diplomatic actions against their own country?

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Scarcely six months ago, on Oct. 30 2017, Democrats led by 10.7 points (46.0 to 35.3) on the Real Clear Politics average of the so-called “generic” congressional ballot question. Last week, a Reuters poll showed the Democrat lead had shrunk to a single point (39 to 38), while the CNN poll showed Democrats up by 3 points (47-44). Democrats’ hope of a “blue wave” in the November midterms have faded, and why? Well, first and foremost, because President Trump’s policies are working — the economy’s booming and foreign-policy successes are everywhere, from North Korea (hostages released) to Iraq, where five top ISIS leaders were captured last week. Democrats and their media allies are unwilling to acknowledge this success, but the American people can see it with their eyes. Americans can also see how Democrats are doing everything in their power to block Trump’s agenda and undermine his administration.

You don’t have to like Trump in order to see that he is trying to keep his promise to “Make America Great Again,” and is succeeding beyond what any of the “experts” predicted. This is a good thing, and Democrats aren’t doing themselves any favors by trying to prevent Trump’s success.

 

Category: Democrats, Donald Trump

Deranged Stalker: ‘When You’re Finding Love, Not Everything Is Perfect’

Posted on | May 13, 2018 | Comments Off on Deranged Stalker: ‘When You’re Finding Love, Not Everything Is Perfect’

 

Just yesterday, I warned (again) that online dating is a bad idea. How bad is it? On “an online dating service for millionaire matchmaking,” according to KPHO-TV in Phoenix, a guy met this nightmare:

A woman accused of sending a Paradise Valley, Arizona man 65,000 text messages tried to explain her actions in a jailhouse news conference, reports CBS Phoenix affiliate KPHO-TV. “I love him,” she said Thursday.
Thirty-one-year-old Jacqueline Claire Ades, of Phoenix, told reporters she met the victim through an online dating service and went out on three dates with him. Police say after the first one, she began sending him thousands of texts, breaking into his home, and showing up at his workplace claiming to be his wife.
“I felt like I met my soulmate and I thought we would just do what everybody else did and we would get married and everything would be fine,” Ades said. . . .
“When you’re finding love, not everything is perfect. This was a journey, and I want to apologize because nobody could never be more sorry.”
Ades said she never intended to hurt or scare the victim and she doesn’t blame him for her incarceration.
“No! I love him!” she exclaimed. . . .
Police say some of the messages Ades sent the victim were threatening.
Among them:
“Don’t ever try to leave me… I’ll kill you… I don’t wanna be a murderer!”
“I hope you die… you rotten filthy Jew.”
“I’m like the new Hitler… man was a genius.” . . .
During the interview, Ades would answer a question or two, then deflect the next one.
She veered from topic to topic, rambling about Einstein, the Dead Sea, the birth chart of Jesus and the symbolism of the markings on a dollar bill.
At one point, she told a reporter, “I don’t want to talk about that. You have negative energy.”
Ades was asked directly, “Are you crazy?”
“No,” she replied. “I am the person that [sic] discovered love.”

While I am not qualified to offer a psychiatric diagnosis, we might colloquially say that she is deranged, demented, wacky, berserk, off her rocker, a few fries short of a Happy Meal and cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

How many psychotics are on online dating sites? All of them, maybe, and every time you “swipe right,” you’re rolling the dice. You never know what kind of lunatic could show up for that date. If she starts jabbering about Einstein, astrology and occult symbolism? Run for your life.

Remember: Crazy People Are Dangerous.

 

Category: Arizona

FMJRA 2.0: High Energy Protons

Posted on | May 12, 2018 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: Crash Test Girl
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

Transgender Supremacy: Understanding the Ideology of a Totalitarian Menace
The Political Hat
Proof Positive
Rotten Chestnuts
EBL

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Predator
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Mexican Radio
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL

Notorious Transgender Activist Compares Feminist Critics to Drug Addicts
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.07.18
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach
EBL

‘Too Valuable’
EBL

Obama’s Legacy Is Still Kicking
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.08.18
Proof Positive
EBL

Errors of Logic and Rhetoric
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.09.18
Proof Positive
EBL

How to Argue With a Feminist
EBL

‘Give Me Equality — and Pay My Bills!’
The Pirate’s Cove
Ordinary Citizen
EBL

The Rocky Horror Family Show
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

In The Mailbox: 05.10.18
Proof Positive
A View From The Beach
EBL

The Profound Sadness of Christine Emba
EBL

‘The Immature, Demagogic Phase’
Pushing Rubber Downhill
EBL

Late Night With In The Mailbox: 05.11.18
EBL
Proof Positive

Top linkers this week:

  1. EBL (17)
  2. Proof Positive (7)
  3. A View From The Beach (4)

Thanks to everyone for their linkagery!


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Category: FMJRA Award

Get Stuffed, Senior Chief @MalcolmNance

Posted on | May 12, 2018 | Comments Off on Get Stuffed, Senior Chief @MalcolmNance

by Smitty

I spent some time on Twitter today doing something wildly unusual for me: defending Senator John McCain over the (as yet unproven) allegation that McCain caused the USS Forrestal disaster. I’m no fan of the old war horse, and wish he’d retired a couple decades back.

Yet, Senior Chief, your sanctimonious denunciation of veterans who support Trump was a completely unimpressive strawmanning operation. No one is accusing Trump of being any more of a war hero than Obama, nor are any veterans admiring of Trump’s personal non-prowess, despite your implications. I hope that you were paid handsomely for your activities. Meanwhile, the bad guys are getting wrecked in ways that Trump’s no-talent rodeo clown predecessor could, apparently, not envision. That, for veterans (not on the take from #FakeNews outlets), is enough.

Don’t make me send Allen West over there to help you get your mind right.

Category: Uncategorized

‘A Particularly Non-Self-Aware Man’

Posted on | May 12, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Online dating is a bad idea. Every time I repeat this warning, someone in the comments will say, “But I met my [husband or wife] on [name of online dating site] and everything was awesome,” as if this anecdotal exception disproves the rule that online dating is a bad idea.

People who engage in online dating are self-selected. What they all have in common is, nobody they know in real life wants to date them. Think about that — if a guy is on OKCupid or Tinder, the one thing you know about him is, he couldn’t find a girlfriend any other way. Simply by signing up for a site, he’s advertising the fact that he’s a loser.

Why do losers lose? In 2009, Christian Rudder did an analysis of OKCupid users and found that two-thirds of messages from men go to just one-third of women on the site, i.e., the most attractive. A very good-looking woman “gets nearly 5 times as many messages as a typical woman and 28 times as many messages” as a woman rated in the lower 20% by looks: “So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten.” Female preferences were even more remarkable: Women on OKCupid rate “an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium.” Was this because the OKCupid dating pool is mostly ugly guys, or because women on the site judge men by an unrealistic standard? Without going any further in our analysis of why these patterns exist, we can nevertheless say that the results shown by the OKCupid study demonstrate typical patterns of losers — men who waste their time in a futile pursuit of beautiful women, and ordinary-looking women who foolishly imagine that Handsome Princes are as common in reality as they are in Disney fairy-tale cartoons. (Hat-tip: Badger Pundit.)

Overestimating your chances is a basic trait of losers. An unrealistically high self-appraisal — a misguided belief that you deserve better romantic partners than are actually available to you — is one obvious reason why people engage in online dating. And it evidently does not occur to these people that the online dating pool is polluted with people just like themselves, because another basic trait of losers is a lack of self-awareness. That is to say, the loser is seldom aware of why he is losing and, indeed, may refuse to recognize that he is a loser. Read more

Category: Sex Trouble, The Transgender Cult

Late Night With In The Mailbox: 05.11.18

Posted on | May 12, 2018 | Comments Off on Late Night With In The Mailbox: 05.11.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: One Person Can Make A Difference…
Twitchy: It’s Now Standing Room Only In Hillary’s Basket of Deplorables
Louder With Crowder: Black Voters In Santa Clarita Blast California’s Sanctuary State Policy
According To Hoyt: We Can’t Afford Socialism
Monster Hunter Nation: May Update Post
Vox Popoli: They Conserve Nothing

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: 2018 Nobel Prize In Literature Canceled Amid Sexual Assault Furor, also, Did The FBI Spy On Trump’s Campaign?
American Thinker: Incivility, Media, And The Left
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Fourth Annual Commencement Speech Friday
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For May 11
BLACKFIVE: Alex & Eliza, Love & War
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: I’m Old Enough To Remember When The MSM & Mueller Thought The Russia Indictments Were A Big Deal
Don Surber: Google Ignores Richard Feynman’s 100th Birthday
Dustbury: Lucky King
The Geller Report: UK Proposes Seven Years In Jail For Criticizing Islam, also, Former Obama Administration Officials Suggest Euro Nations Expel U.S. Ambassadors Over Iran Deal Pullout
Hogewash: Blognet, also, Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also also (Bonus!) Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Joe For America: Ending Secret Science At The EPA
Legal Insurrection: Merkel Teams Up With Putin To Save Iran Deal, also,  Why Is Stacy’s Crazy Cousin John Opposing Haspel After Voting For Brennan?
Michelle Malkin: Daniel Holtzclaw Update – Innocence Community In NY Speaks Out
Power Line: An FBI Informant In The Trump Campaign? Part 1 and Part 2, also, Sarah Sanders Responds To Iran Critics
Shark Tank: New Poll Suggests Scott Will Defeat Nelson
Shot In The Dark: Graceless
STUMP: Happy Idea – Moving From Defined Benefit To “Defined Ambition”
The Political Hat: Women Living Longer Than Men Is Now Considered Misogyny
This Ain’t Hell: Happy Birthday, Richard Overton, also, Friday Morning Feelgood Stories
Victory Girls: Remember, This Is What Single Payer Looks Like
Weasel Zippers: Emails Show Comey Coordinated His Russia Testimony With Mueller, also, New Tom Steyer PAC Ad Compares Republicans To White Nationalists
Mark Steyn: Eat Your Heart Out, Alec Baldwin, also, The Interrogator


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Category: Linkagery

‘The Immature, Demagogic Phase’

Posted on | May 11, 2018 | Comments Off on ‘The Immature, Demagogic Phase’

 

Who is J.J. McCullough? Never heard of him before yesterday, when someone called my attention to his latest National Review column:

I doubt that many Americans would disagree that the country’s conversation about gay rights is far more mature and considered than it was two decades ago. . . .
Today, there exists broad understanding that homosexual people are unavoidable and common, present in all corners and demographics of American life. Through education, and especially exposure, homosexuality is no longer regarded as bizarre, threatening, or mysterious. . . .
Looking at the state of America’s transgender debate, I often wonder if things are destined to unfold in a similar way.
At present, it feels we’re still in the immature, demagogic phase. In some quarters, it remains fashionable to act theatrically repulsed by transgender people, emphasize their weirdness, and make populist appeals to the preposterousness of women asking to be called “him” or surgeons amputating penises and so forth. Yet this seems more cathartic than anything, in the same way that showy judgment of gays did a generation earlier. As with homosexuality in the 1980s and ’90s, the loud revulsion of critics conceals a fading interest in actually attempting to “solve” transgenderism, as even those most offended by it seem to quietly regard purported cures as quackish and authoritarian. . . .

When he posted this column to Twitter, Mr. McCullough predicted it was “bound to be contentious,” and he was right. His column inspired rejoinders from both Michael Brendan Dougherty and David French at National Review, and I don’t think either of them can be accused of immature demagoguery in this matter. What’s wrong with Mr. McCullough’s argument, for the most part, is that he is young — about 25 years younger than me — and is therefore ignorant of how we got here.

Let anyone answer this question: Where were you when the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision was announced? At the time, I was 43 and working as an assistant national editor at The Washington Times, and was aware that activists in Massachusetts had prepared in advance to make this decision the basis of legalizing same-sex marriage. Because of the “full faith and credit” clause of the Constitution, the act of Massachusetts immediately provoked the question of whether the same-sex marriages recognized in that state would be considered valid in other states. In his dissent in the Lawrence case, Justice Scalia indicated he had foreseen such developments, and he also noted how little concern for stare decisis the Court majority showed in overturning the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision. Well, as it happens, 1986 was the year I began my journalism career in a small town in Cobb County, Georgia. Michael Bowers was Attorney General of Georgia, and this 1986 decision upheld our state’s law against sodomy. Take my word for it when I say that sodomy was not a rare practice in Georgia at the time, and that few of its practitioners even realized they were engaged in a crime. Nevertheless, while this statute was rarely enforced, its existence in Georgia law served valid social purposes, and was of ancient origin, dating back through centuries of Anglo-American common law. The Lawrence decision was therefore of greater importance than most people realized at the time, but I was not most people, and had been warned in advance (thank you, Cheryl Wetzstein) that the Court was opening Pandora’s Box, from which a nightmare of chaos would predictably emerge.

Where was J.J. McCullough in 2003? He would have been about 18 at the time, and almost certainly has no understanding of How We Got Here. So I felt it might be a good idea to send him a courteous email:

Dear Mr. McCullough:
Has the possibility occurred to you that what you call “the loud revulsion of critics” toward the gay-rights movement in the 1980s and ’90s was correct? Your problem, sir, is that you are very young and did not live through the era which you are describing.
I graduated high school the same year (1977) that Anita Bryant made headlines for her opposition to the gay-rights measure then recently enacted in Miami. I was not then (and never was, during my youth) a “young conservative,” and did not really care about politics, still less about the issues that concerned what came to be called the Religious Right.
“Who cares?” That was my basic reaction to much of the sturm und drang of the incipient Culture War at the time, when I was a dangerously reckless young man with hair down to his shoulders, immersed in the “sex, drugs and rock-and-roll” way of life. Looking back on my wild youth, it has often occurred to my how miraculous it is that I survived it all. It certainly did not cross my mind at the time — for I was a particularly heedless hedonist — that there was anything political about my pursuit of pleasure. Circa 1984, when I voted for Walter Mondale for president, nobody could have predicted how powerful the LGBT lobby would eventually become. The Cold War was still the major focus of American politics, and the Democrat Party had not yet gone all-in on Cultural Marxism; Mondale was an old-fashioned AFL-CIO Democrat, and if anyone in 1984 accused him of advocating the abolition of laws against sodomy, I must have missed that.
In the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s sodomy law, which of course was so seldom enforced that the illegality of sodomy was important mainly because it permitted police occasionally to crack down on gay “cruising” in public parks, charging people with solicitation of sodomy, a crime unto itself. This was not evident to me at the time, as I had no reason to pay attention to such matters, nor did most other people. We had no Internet, no blogs, no social media, and because young people couldn’t just log on and constantly blab their opinions for an international audience, it was easy to ignore politics, except at election time. And it was not until the mid-1990s, by which time I was a married father of three and working as assistant to the editorial page editor of the Rome (Ga.) News-Tribune, that I began reconsidering my indifference to the issues of the Culture War.
Fatherhood tends to change a man’s perspective on such things. Would I want my own children to be exposed to the dangerous hedonism that I’d pursued in my youth? No, sir, I would not. Some of my former dope buddies ended up in prison, including one who was sentenced to Georgia’s Death Row, and a few of my high school classmates died of AIDS. If there was “loud revulsion” toward the gay-rights movement in the 1990s, the deadly plague of AIDS was a major factor in that. You could benefit from reading Destructive Generation by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, particularly Chapter 9, “AIDS: The Origins of a Political Epidemic.” One might be sympathetic toward homosexuals, yet still recognize that the ideological idolatry of “equality” and “sexual liberation” on the Left has had catastrophic consequences.
What I have noticed, and frequently written about in recent years, is the fanatical intolerance of the LGBT movement, an attitude I’ve described as the Compulsory Approval Doctrine. It is now considered “hate” for anyone to criticize any policy advocated by LGBT activists, let alone to express disapproval of homosexuality, per se. This intolerant attitude necessarily infringes the religious liberty of Bible-believing Christians, who can cite chapter and verse on the subject of sin.
It would behoove young conservatives who blab their opinions on the Internet to study the actual history of the phenomena about which they so confidently opine. Have you, Mr. McCullough, carefully read the late Justice Scalia’s dissenting opinions in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), U.S. v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)? Justice Scalia stated with great clarity the principles of a conservative opposition to gay rights, as a general matter and, if you are a conservative, you ought to consider how those principles might apply specifically to the transgender issue on which you advocate “compromise.”
Young people naturally want to be popular among their peers, to be one of the “cool kids,” to follow the fashionable trend. This is understandable — if only you could have seen me at 19! — but it is the sacred duty of adults to steer young people away from danger, to warn them against following the path that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14). Do conservatives “act theatrically repulsed by transgender people [and] emphasize their weirdness”? Do you suppose, sir, it is merely an “act”? Insofar as the conservatives you describe are adults, it is likely that they are also parents, and do you think sensible parents are not authentically horrified by the thought of their children being sucked into the vortex of the Transgender Cult? You should spend some time (as I have) talking to parents whose teenagers succumbed to “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria.” This phenomenon wasn’t originally identified by right-wingers or fundamentalist Christians, but rather by radical feminists (many of them militant lesbians) who have become profoundly concerned about the way Internet activism has helped foment what they describe as a “social contagion” of transgenderism among young people.
Do you think that the “weirdness” in the transgender community is something conservatives have imagined? Are you familiar with “Zinnia Jones” (a/k/a Zachary Antolak, a/k/a “Lauren McNamara,” a/k/a “Satana Kennedy”)? Or have you investigated “Char Vortryss” (a/k/a Clinton James Crawford, a/k/a “Char the Butcher)? Perhaps you should do some more research before you go blabbing your opinion about this; I could refer you to my friend Cynthia Yockey, a conservative lesbian who is writing a book on the subject. We seem once again to be living through the kind of era Buffalo Springfield sang about in 1967: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” A few years ago, almost no one could have imagined Donald Trump becoming president, nor could it have been predicted that social conservatives would find common cause with radical feminists in opposing transgender activists. Yet here we are, in this moment of unexpected weirdness, and I should hope a young person like yourself, who aspires to be considered an intellectual, would be more thoughtful about the causes and potential consequences of this uncanny convergence.
Sincerely,
Robert Stacy McCain

Do I think this will change Mr. McCullough’s mind? No, young fools are not apt to admit error or to acknowledge the value of experience when their elders seek to correct the untutored errors of youth. However, I felt it important to suggest to him the nature of his error, so that if he ever repents his folly, he might have some idea of why he was wrong.



 

Category: The Transgender Cult
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