In The Mailbox: 05.12.17

Posted on | May 12, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.12.17

OVER THE TRANSOM
First Street Journal: NIMBY!
BattleSwarm: Friday LinkSwarm!
EBL: White House, GOP Should Shun Mika & Morning Joe
Twitchy: FALSE! FOUR PINOCCHIOS! Brit Hume Truth Bombs Kamala Harris And Her Pre-Existing Conditions Lie
Louder With Crowder: Patriotic Dad Not Having Any Of San Diego Schools’ Pro-Islam Curriculum
According To Hoyt: The Warning Bells
Monster Hunter Nation: Iron Fist Rates A Solid Meh
Vox Popoli: “Barbaric Terrorist Acts”

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Holy Kek! It’s The Hawt Chick And Links!, also, Podcast #47 – The Vegetarian Episode
American Power: Teaching Racism In K-12 Classrooms
American Thinker: Five Benefits Of Trump’s Economic Policies
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Third Annual Commencement Speech Friday
Da Tech Guy: Fausta – A Week Of Pearl-Clutching
Don Surber: Democrat Corrine Brown’s “Charity” Gave Only .01% To Charity
Dustbury: Dumbass Lacks Remorse
The Geller Report: ACLU Lawyer Says Travel Ban “Could Be Constitutional” If Enacted By Hillary
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, Hunting a Supermassive Black Hole
Jammie Wearing Fools: Trump Keeps Adding To The “Collusion” Smoke, But There’s Still No Fire
Joe For America: Mexico Angry At The Immigrants Ruining Their Country
JustOneMinute: Comey Out! And What Does It Mean?
Power Line: Senate Dems – Appoint A Special Prosecutor Or We’ll Hold Our Breath Until We Turn Blue
Shark Tank: Trump Calls Democrats “Phony Hypocrites”
Shot In The Dark: The Problem With Being Goliath
STUMP: Multi-Employer Pension Plans – Critical Plans Treading Water, Waiting To Drown
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – Noah Almost There, also, Minnesota Student Hates Herself
The Political Hat: The Age Of Synthetic Catgirls Is Nyaa-igh, also, Academic Thought-Criminal Runs Afoul Of MiniTru
This Ain’t Hell: Navy’s “Supply Officer Of The Year” Sentenced
Weasel Zippers: Media Freaking Out That Trump Got Two Scoops Of Ice Cream. Really., also, California Democrat Refers To Middle America As “Podunk USA”
Mark Steyn: The Hundred Per Cent Ally

Today’s Digital Deals
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Category: Linkagery

Typical Canadians, IYKWIMAITYD

Posted on | May 11, 2017 | Comments Off on Typical Canadians, IYKWIMAITYD

Suresh Patel, 49; Muhammad Jaffer, 22; Muhammad Sarchami, 31; Hernando Carvajal, 29; Intekhab Shaikh, 42; Sakhi Alekozai, 29; Shamim Abowath, 54; Ruchir Shah, 34; Nima Latifpour, 25; Sanjay Ninan, 42; Jaipal Sidhu, 26; Adeniran Adekola, 33; Ming Wong, 39; Zan He, 33; Segundo Fernandez, 54; Anpalagan Kanapathipillai, 39; Navaneetharan Packianathan, 25; Rajorshi Bhaumik, 34; Miguel Feliciano, 38; Virushan Premanathan, 25; Suhayl Rajan, 24; Sivanesan Veerasingam, 50; Jamshid Jalilian, 25; Zhi Situ, 22; Tejash Patel, 33; Quang Tran, 37; Ravikumar Ghandhi, 31; Ahmad Hassan, 21; Anshu Manocha, 33; Sivaratnam Sinnappillai, 39; Naidu Matas, 54; Paramjit Sandhi, 35; Hari Bhaskar, 55; Ramy Kawar, 39; Zu Liang Xiao, 28; Ali Mansourinajand, 24; Ramiz Multani, 25 — what do these men have in common? They were among more than 100 suspects arrested in a Canadian sex crime investigation:

Police have arrested 104 men for attempting to have sex with children forced into prostitution, following a four-year undercover human trafficking investigation in which 85 underage victims were found and 49 pimps charged in York Region since 2012.
York Regional Police Det.-Sgt. Thai Truong said 104 men were arrested as first time offenders in the investigation from 2014 to April 2017 for negotiating “the purchase of a prostituted child between the ages of 13 and 16 years old.” . . .
Human trafficking investigators launched Project Raphael in 2014, which Truong said was a three-pronged approach to combating the issue in the region. . . .
Police targetted pimps, focused on rescuing victims and connecting them with community support workers and attempted to stop the demand for prostituted children.
“We essentially put up advertisements online when men were looking to purchase sex they were told that they were communicating with a child, with a prostituted child,” Truong told reporters during a press conference [April 21]. . . .
Of the 104 arrests, 32 of the suspects had pleaded guilty with sentences ranging from three to seven months.
“Almost all of these men are first time offenders … they had stable jobs, and families and not the type of people who usually see in the criminal justice system,” Susan Orlando, of the Attorney General’s human trafficking prosecution team, said.

The list of men arrested in this sex-trafficking investigation was posted online. I’ve chosen from the list the most typical Canadian names. Do the math and you find that these typical Canadians comprise 36% of the suspects arrested. Check the list yourself — Page One, Page Two, Page Three — and you’ll see I’ve omitted names like Richard Kwok, Steve Ko and Milton Sanchez-Guevera that didn’t seem quite Canadian enough.

Far be it from me to generalize on the basis of this limited sample. There are nearly 36 million people in Canada, and the fact that a few dozen typical Canadians were arrested on child-sex charges does not mean that all Canadians are pedophiles. It would be wrong — perhaps even racist — to allow a small number of criminals to tarnish the reputation of an entire country. Ontario is home to lots of excellent law-abiding people with typical Canadian names like Muhammad, Miguel, Ahmad, Sanjay, Quang and Ming, and it would be wrong to cast them all under the shadow of suspicion, merely because of these criminals. However . . .

Meghan Murphy is editor of Feminist Current, Canada’s leading feminist website, and notice how she employs generalization:

According to York Regional Police Det.-Sgt. Thai Truong, many of the men arrested were married, disrupting the oft-repeated lie that johns are simply lonely or “socially awkward” men who need company and affection.
Susan Orlando, of the Attorney General’s human trafficking prosecution team, reaffirmed this at a press conference on Friday, saying the men arrested “had stable jobs and families, and [were] not the type of people who [we] usually see in the criminal justice system.”
Truong added that the men came from “all walks of life” . . .
We know that it is very common for prostituted women to report having entered into the industry during adolescence, which tells us there is an enormous market for girls. It also tells us that there is no clear line between the prostituted women labelled “consenting adults” by advocates of legalization, and exploited underage girls in the industry. These exploited girls become exploited adults, in other words. . . .
To evidence how common it is for men to seek out prostituted girls, the police reported that in just three days of the investigation in 2017, officers arrested 19 men who believed that they were purchasing sex from either a 13-year-old or a 14-year-old.

Do you see how Meghan Murphy is playing a game here? Is it really “very common . . . for men to seek out prostituted girls”? No, of course not. The vast majority of men have never sought out a prostitute of any age, and would never do so. Most men abhor prostitution as a loathsome crime, and would oppose any measure to legalize prostitution, no matter what arguments are made by Canadian “advocates of legalization.”

Is there “an enormous market for girls” in Canada? Well, among those Canadian men who are in the habit of seeking out prostitutes, perhaps. But while Meghan Murphy is correct in suggesting that law-enforcement leniency toward prostitution tends to have the effect of increasing the number of teenage girls who will be lured or coerced into prostitution, she is wrong to suggest that Canadian men in general constitute an “enormous market” for teenage sex slaves. You see how feminism permits negative generalizations about men — demonizing half the human race — in ways that would be impermissible were such generalizations used to smear ethnic minorities. You can generalize about white men, but not about men named Miguel, Ming or Muhammad.

This is exactly what feminists do in the name of “intersectionality.” Because they are part of a left-wing political coalition seeking to unite every crank, kook and moocher with a grievance against Western civilization, feminists have gone to great lengths to argue that racism, sexism and homophobia are all part of an interlocking system of oppression — “capitalist imperialist white supremacist cisheteronormative patriarchy,” to quote the executive director of USC Women’s Student Assembly. One notices in feminist discourse how often the phrase “white heterosexual male” is employed as an all-purpose epithet. White guys are the cause of all evil in the world, according to feminists like Boston College Professor Janet Helms, who saw the sinister influence of White Heterosexual Male Privilege in last year’s presidential election. “The current cost of tuition, fees and room and board at Boston College is $65,644 for a single year,” as Eric Owens pointed out. Females are a majority (54%) of Boston College undergraduates, and only 62% of their students are white. “White Heterosexual Male Privilege” could only apply to 30% of Boston College’s enrollment, unless you add in those 33% of white female students enjoying the benefits of Daddy’s money.

Oh, but this is what feminism is really about, see? Rich college girls full of self-pity, claiming to be victims of sexist oppression. And because they don’t want to be suspected of racism, these rich white girls invented “intersectionality” so they could expiate their White Guilt by claiming that somehow being female atones for their sin in being white.

All of this is just Cultural Marxist nonsense, “critical theory” developed by a lot of overpaid professors based on the writings of a bunch of decadent European intellectuals like Foucault and Derrida. Thirty years into the takeover of academia by post-structuralism, there is now scarcely anyone on an American university campus who has the intelligence or courage necessary to denounce critical theory as a delusion, a paranoid persecution fantasy of the progressive Left. But I digress . . .

What if I seized upon this list of Ontario sex-trafficking suspects to claim that guys named Muhammad are particularly prone to pedophilia, and thus largely responsible for child prostitution? Of course, feminists would begin shrieking “Racism!” and “Islamophobia!” But why is it OK for Meghan Murphy to insinuate that Canadian males in general are such perverts that an “enormous market for girls” exists north of the border, where it is “common . . . for men to seek out prostituted girls”?

Oh, that’s acceptable, because when a feminist reads a headline that more than 100 men were arrested in a sex-trafficking investigation, she just assumes that these Canadian perverts were white, and every feminist knows that white men are the lowest form of life on the planet.

This kind of left-wing groupthink — collective victimhood and collective guilt — is antithetical to individual responsibility. It is hate propaganda to describe a category (e.g., “men in Toronto” or “men named Muhammad”) and to attribute to them a heinous behavior (e.g., “seeking child prostitutes”) as a way of implying collective guilt. For some reason, the Left objects when we call attention to Muslims who shout “Allahu akbar!” while killing Americans, but the Left expects us to ignore the way feminists collectively demonize white males.

By the way, who is advocating legalized prostitution? Meghan Murphy seems to spend a lot of time attacking such arguments, and I don’t know much about Canadian politics, but I’m pretty sure right-wingers aren’t the ones engaged in this advocacy. Prostitution is reportedly rampant in Vancouver, where thousands of hookers and call girls ply their trade with the tacit approval of the left-wing municipal government.

Who is responsible for all this prostitution in Canada? Not me.

See, this is how individual responsibility works. It doesn’t matter if your name is Muhammad or Miguel, you are responsible for what you do, and you can’t blame your problems on somebody else. You got caught trying to hook up with a teenage girl who turned out to be an undercover cop? Don’t tell me you’re a victim of systemic oppression, because there are guys named Muhammad and Miguel who didn’t do what you did. And if you are a member of an ethnic group with a bad reputation — for example, Canadians — don’t blame this on the “prejudice” of others. Try to be a decent law-abiding person, and most people will be willing to give you a chance in life, despite the fact that you’re Canadian.

There are at least two or three Canadians who aren’t half-bad, but in general, I stay as far away from Canadians as possible. I’ve never forgiven Canada for inflicting Neil Young on the world, and for the same cursed nation to unleash Meghan Murphy to terrorize humanity — well, you’ll be a long time living that one down, collectively speaking.

“They’re not even a real country anyway.”

Category: Canada, Crime, Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 05.11.17

Posted on | May 11, 2017 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 05.11.17

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
BattleSwarm: ComeyComeyComeyComeyChameleon
Proof Positive: Th-th-th-th-That’s All Folks!
EBL: Asshat And Hypocrite-Brit John Oliver
Twitchy: Michelle Malkin Hammers Sanctuary City Cheerleaders With Maddening Reality
Louder With Crowder: ABC Cancels Successful, Conservative Last Man Standing Despite Good Ratings

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The Cost-Benefit Analysis On Vaccinations
American Power: Eric Hinderaker, At The Edge Of Empire
American Thinker: Comey Fired – Now Indict Hillary
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Testicle Transplant News
Bring The HEAT: It’s A Reason, Not An Excuse
Da Tech Guy: Pavlov’s Dog Answers Bell, Colbert And Stewart Hardest Hit
Don Surber: Garrison Keillor’s Stark Admission
Dustbury: We Are But Empty Vessels
Fred On Everything: Sally Cone Hits The Dating Scene
The Geller Report: Poland Refuses Migrants, Terror Map Shows Shocking Results
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Jammie Wearing Fools: The “Resistance” Tells GOP Congressman “This Is How We’re Going To Kill Your Wife”
Joe For America: Harvard University Welcomes Segregation With “Blacks Only” Graduation Ceremony
Power Line: The AP Goes Around The Bend On Comey
Shark Tank: Trump Highlights Democrats’ Hypocrisy On Comey Firing
Shot In The Dark: For The Millennial In Your Life
STUMP: “Rights” Vs. Reality – When Will They Ever Learn
The Jawa Report: At Last, Trump To Arm Kurds!, also, That Other FBI Director Firing
The Political Hat: A Venerable Privilege
This Ain’t Hell: Maxine Waters, As Clear As Mud
War Is Boring: Foreign Soldiers Built The French Army
Weasel Zippers: NYC Bomber Claims Cops Shot Him Too Many Times, Wants Reduced Sentence For Pain & Suffering, also, Bangladesh PM Says Hillary Pressured Her To Help Clinton Foundation Donor
Megan McArdle: Trump Confirms His Autocratic Instincts, And His Ineptitude
Mark Steyn: Tomorrow By The Numbers

Today’s Digital Deals
Today’s Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Feminist Web Site Endangered by Systemic Oppression and a Lack of Cash

Posted on | May 11, 2017 | Comments Off on Feminist Web Site Endangered by Systemic Oppression and a Lack of Cash

But mainly, it’s the lack of cash:

Over the last five years, the Everyday Feminism team has built an incredible network of intersectional feminists. In 2016 alone, we had more than 40 million viewers in over 140 countries.
We offer an unique, educational, inside-out approach to fighting everyday oppression. And with the Trump administration in the White House, and the political climate as dangerous as it is, we know our work is especially critical now.
We’re facing scary financial trouble that’s threatening to put a halt to our work — maybe even as soon as the end of May.
We’ve realized that we’re just not going to be able to continue without some support from our community.
We’re not the only site struggling like this, and there’s a reason for that. It’s quite a challenge, to say the least, to create independent, intersectional feminist media in a financially sustainable way, especially in a world that doesn’t value what we do.

Before discussing the kind of “independent, intersectional feminist media” being created by “the Everyday Feminism team,” let’s ask:

How have they managed to keep their site going since 2012?
and
Why has the cash-crunch hit their site now?

There are no advertisements on Everyday Feminism, and I once spent several fruitless hours looking through their site to try to locate information about their funding. Is it a 501(c)3? Is there some major foundation giving them grants? Did somebody win the Powerball? Your guess is as good as mine, but my hunch is that the founders of Everyday Feminism must have had a connection to a deep-pockets liberal donor who didn’t mind cutting a check every year for, say, a quarter-million bucks in order to promote a certain kind of feminism.

And that kind feminism is decidedly queer. What? You think “queer” is a slur? No, it’s commonly used in Everyday Feminism headlines:

I Know I’m Queer — Now What?
— Erin Tatum, Aug. 27, 2014

3 Ways to Stand Up to Toxic Messages
and Accept Yourself as a Queer Person
— Jarune Uwujaren, Dec. 15, 2014

How Stereotypes About What Queer Women
Look Like Erases Femmes
— Joy Young, Jan. 9, 2015

11 Common Assumptions About
Being a Queer Femme — Debunked
— Rhea Ewing, Feb. 10, 2016

5 Ways to Maintain Your Queer Identity
in a Relationship People Read as Straight
— Miri Mogilevsky, March 29, 2016

7 Practical Ways Straight Parent
Can Support Their Queer Children
— Sian Ferguson, Aug. 29, 2016

3 Reasons We Need to Be Critical
of Sex Positivity in Queer Spaces
— Caleb Luna, Oct. 11, 2016

Those are just a few of the dozens of queer headlines at Everyday Feminism, a site that is “inclusive” of everything except heterosexuality. Everyday Feminism’s managing editor, Melissa Fabello, is a self-described “queer woman” who has a degree in Human Sexuality, and who is also infected with HPV, a sexually transmitted disease.

“Right now, today, as of writing this, I identify as queer. But I didn’t always. And no, I’m not referring to that awkward, uncomfortable time in my life where I knew that something felt ‘off,’ but I couldn’t quite place it, and so I paraded around in the charade of ‘straight.’ I mean that a few years ago, I identified as homoflexible. And before that, a lesbian. And even before that, bisexual.”
— Melissa Fabello

Everyday Feminism is a site that consistently conveys the message that heterosexuality is wrong, almost as wrong as voting Republican.

This is what “intersectional feminism” means in 21st-century America:

Identify as queer;
and
Vote Democrat!

Well, that message got 40 million page-views at Everyday Feminism last year, but it wasn’t enough to elect Hillary Clinton. In fact, if you were the kind of deep-pockets Democrat donor who might have been cutting checks to fund Everyday Feminism, maybe you woke up one day last November and wondered why all those blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan voted for Donald Trump. And possibly, it could have occurred to you that maybe promoting queer feminism as the agenda of the Democrat Party wasn’t really such a clever idea after all.

“We have no money!” Melissa Fabello pleads on Twitter. She doesn’t understand why her anti-male hate propaganda site isn’t profitable. Did I mention how much Melissa Fabello hates white heterosexual men?

Feminism is a hate movement, and Melissa Fabello and her colleagues at Everyday Feminism have spent five years demonstrating why no sane or honest person would associate themselves with feminism.

David Thompson is so overwrought with grief about the financial crisis at Everyday Feminism that he shares some of their, uh, greatest hits, my favorite of which is from radical queer witch Kris Nelson:

As a follower of Diana; as a worshipper of the sun, the moon, and the earth; and as a witch, it is my responsibility to engage in radical politics. . . .
As a witch and a radical, I see the revolutionary potential in knowing the healing qualities of items that are much more accessible than a lot of modern medications… This is especially salient in a world that inflicts so much emotional damage through systemic oppression. . . .
As a non-binary trans person who rejects marriage, nuclear family structure, division of community, and Christian imperialism, I identify with “witch” as an outsider.

This lunatic gibberish was published by Everyday Feminism, where “intersectional” is a synonym for crazy. What’s scary is how close these kooks came to electing Hillary Clinton president. Yeah, that was the political goal of Everyday Feminism, a site that was launched in June 2012 and which just coincidentally now finds itself in a cash crunch.

Strange how these coincidences happen . . .

ADDENDUM: Adding to the curiosity about Everyday Feminism’s finances, their fundraising appeal lists an address in Tallahassee, Florida, to which checks can be mailed. That address (75 N. Woodward Ave) is the Student Mail Center at Florida State University. So it seems whoever is in charge of the money at Everyday Feminism is an FSU student.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Sex Trouble

In The Mailbox: 05.10.17

Posted on | May 10, 2017 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
BattleSwarm: Venezuela Boils
EBL: Hypocrisy, Hysteria, And Histrionics Over Comey Firing
Michelle Malkin: Can Cops Get A Fair Trial In America?
Twitchy: Audience Reaction To Comey Firing NOT What Colbert Wanted
Louder With Crowder: Maryland’s Legal Immigrants OPPOSE Sanctuary Cities, Democrats Shocked!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Actor Antonio Sabato Jr. To Run For Congress
American Thinker: New Obama Bio Not Just Exhausting, It’s Insulting
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
Da Tech Guy: Fausta – NYC To Honor Convicted Terrorist As “National Freedom Hero”
Don Surber: Canning Comey Is America’s Rorschach Test
Dustbury: Healthier Meth!
The Geller Report: Czech Girl Scout Says “If I Get Raped By Migrants, I’ll Get Over It”
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day
Jammie Wearing Fools: Democrats React Calmly To Firing Of Guy They Wanted Fired – “A Dark And Dangerous Moment In History”
Joe For America: Miley Cyrus Says “Hip Hop Is Too Sexual. I Want To Produce More Wholesome Music.”
JustOneMinute: The Unions Come To Campus – Stand Back!
Power Line: 15% Of Terror Investigations Are Of Refugees
Shark Tank: Lt. Gov. Lopez-Cantera To Run For Ros-Lehtinen’s Congressional Seat?
Shot In The Dark: “I Hate You,” She Explained
STUMP: Catch-Up Week – Dallas And Houston Doings, Still A-Roar
The Jawa Report: Opening! Great Opportunity! Travel, Good Pay, Great Benefits!, also, Interfaith Conference Muslim Informs Infidels They Have A Choice – Convert Or Die
The Political Hat: Is There Any City City In England NOT Infested With Rape Gangs?
This Ain’t Hell: Trump Calls Out Valor Thief Blumenthal
War Is Boring: The American Way Of War Is A Budget Breaker, also, Chicago’s Gang Wars Have Become Battles Of Attrition
Weasel Zippers: Anti-Gun Ghouls Use Bob Owens’ Suicide As Political Prop, also, Kaepernick May Quit Football, Do Social Justice Work Full Time
Megan McArdle: France Has A Leader, But Not An Opposition Yet
Mark Steyn: Posse Comey Tantrum

Today’s Digital Deals
Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Bob Owens, R.I.P.

Posted on | May 9, 2017 | Comments Off on Bob Owens, R.I.P.

Yesterday I saw on Instapundit the news that Bob Owens, editor of the Bearing Arms site, had died. I remember Bob from his days as an independent blogger at Confederate Yankee, back in the paleo-blogging era, before giant media organizations zoomed in to scoop up all the traffic. News of his death — he was only 46 — was disturbing, and I figured it must have been a heart attack. However, the Washington Post reports that Bob apparently committed suicide, after posting a message to Facebook in which he called himself a “coward, and selfish son of a b–ch.” What happened? We may never know, although his friend Katie Pavlich writes that Bob “recently landed a book deal,” and perhaps the extra burden of that project on top of his other work overwhelmed him. As I’ve sometimes remarked, a deadline for a non-fiction book is a crisis that probably can’t be imagined by anyone who hasn’t endured it. He was already working as an editor and as a firearms trainer. Was this book contract too much? I make that suggestion, not knowing what might have been troubling Bob Owens, but knowing how easily depression can snowball for any writer if your productivity starts lagging.

People have become too comfortable in recent years speaking of depression as a clinical disorder, an incurable disease whereby as soon as you’re diagnosed as afflicted with it, you will require professional treatment the rest of your life. This medicalized view of depression is, not coincidentally, a bonanza for the pharmaceutical industry and providers of psychiatric care. And while I don’t want to start an argument with the mental health profession, I think that in general our society is over-diagnosed. You see this problem very clearly in the world of feminist Tumblr, which is full of young women claiming to be victims of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, even PTSD, like they just got back from the Battle of Khe Sanh or something. Reading their endless whining, you want to reach through the computer screen, slap their faces and scream: “You are not a victim! You’re a pathetic spoiled brat with a bad haircut! Log off the Internet, go get a job and stop blaming the patriarchy for all your problems! Also, maybe you could stand to lose 20 or 30 pounds, just sayin’ . . .”

Anyway, if having a diagnosed mental illness makes you a victim of oppression, I’m sure anyone who knows me could confirm that I’m crazy, but what I’ve tried to do is to monetize my insanity, turning craziness into a career skill. And “depression”? Well, I don’t know that you need a diagnosis if you write for a living. Writers are inherently prone to depression, simply because it’s such a solitary endeavor. Whatever else is involved in the job, ultimately it comes down to sitting alone in front of a computer screen for hours every day. Even if you’re going out to do on-the-scene reporting, when it’s time to turn your notes into a story, you’re still going to spend three or four hours at the keyboard banging it out. Anybody who’s ever been around me when I’m writing on deadline — filing from a convention or a debate or a campaign rally — knows what a horrible monster I can become under those conditions.

All of this discussion of the psychological stress inherent to writing for a living, however, may be entirely irrelevant to Bob Owens’ suicide. We don’t have any explanation for what may have been bothering him, and in the absence of facts, we should not speculate. We have lost a valued comrade, and Bob leaves behind a widow and two daughters, ages 9 and 17. There’s a Go Fund Me page where you can contribute to help, so please go hit the tip jar for old Bob. I already did. R.I.P., Confederate Yankee!

Bob Owens Family & College Fund https://t.co/RI6aFlKIny

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) May 10, 2017

Category: Blogging

Liberal Paranoia in the Trump Age

Posted on | May 9, 2017 | 1 Comment

Ever since Hillary lost the election, Democrats have been stoking the fires of fear, hatred and suspicion among their liberal voter base. This fear-mongering is an attempt to overcome the demoralization Democrats face after last November’s unexpected defeat. However, the anti-Trump propaganda campaign relies on a misguided demonization of Republicans as “fascists,” perpetrators of hate crimes and other atrocities. Because this narrative is essentially false, the Democrats are quite literally driving many of their supporters crazy, filling their minds with preposterous paranoid conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality.

Shortly after Election Day, someone vandalized an Episcopal church in the tiny crossroads hamlet of Beanblossom, Indiana, in rural Brown County, population 15,242, about an hour south of Indianapolis. The vandals painted “Heil Trump” and “Fag Church” on the church. Given the Episcopal denomination’s drift into liberalism, and the fact that Brown County went more than 2-to-1 for Trump (who got 63% of the county’s vote to Hillary’s 31%), this “Fag Church” attack seemed entirely plausible to liberals who claimed America was besieged by a wave of Trump-inspired hate crimes. “The Southern Poverty Law Center counted 867 cases of hateful harassment or intimidation in the United States in the 10 days after the November 8 election,” CNN reported at the time:

On Sunday morning, the Rev. Kelsey Hutto got the news that vandals had painted “Heil Trump,” an anti-gay slur and a swastika on the side of her church, Saint David’s Episcopal in Beanblossom, Indiana.
She told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota . . . that she was at first sad, but believes that the church was targeted because it has always been inclusive to everyone. So, she said, she is taking comfort that whoever did this actually did this for the right reason, because the church has always been welcoming to everyone.
“Doing the right thing is not always the popular thing.” . . .
The Brown County Sheriff’s Department tells CNN it is investigating the incident. Investigators don’t currently have any suspects or leads, but they have shared their report with the state police department and are hoping someone in the community will come forward with information if they have it.

Earlier this month, police apprehended the culprit, George Nathaniel Stang, a 26-year-old homosexual who plays organ at the church:

Stang told everyone he discovered the graffiti when he arrived for Sunday morning services. . . .
According to court records, when confronted with the evidence, the 26-year-old gay man confessed.
Investigators say Stang admitted to painting the “Heil Trump” and “Fag Church” graffiti himself because he wanted to “mobilize a movement after being disappointed in and fearful of the outcome of the national election.” He insisted his actions were not motivated by anti-Christian or anti-gay sentiments. . . .
Brown County Prosecutor Ted Adams talked about Stang’s alleged motive.
“He explained that one of the reasons he had done it was because of fear. He was concerned about the results of the election,” Adams said.
In a three-page, handwritten statement, Stang, according to court records, wanted to “mobilize a movement.”
“I suppose I wanted to give local people a reason to fight for good, even if it was a false flag,” he wrote. “To be clear my actions were not motivated by hate for the church or its congregation. I of course realize now, this was NOT the way to go about inspiring activism.”

To give people “a reason to fight for good,” you try to “mobilize a movement” by perpetrating a crime you blame on your political opponents. Can you say “Reichstag fire,” boys and girls?

For all the talk of Trump being a neo-fascist, Democrats seem to be the ones resorting to Nazi-style propaganda tactics in America lately. The media are contributing to this paranoia, as even liberal Chris Cillizza laments in citing multiple recent examples in which “liberals, fueled by Twitter outrage, jumped to conclusions that portrayed Trump and other Republicans in the poorest possible light. And, on each occasion, the fuller story either totally or mostly rebutted the version of the story the left had seized on. . . . Democrats run the risk of appearing like the boy who cried wolf.” As Stephen Green comments at Instapundit, this “panic-mongering” is “about keeping the base riled up” until the next election.

The problem is that this requires constant hyping of anti-Republican paranoia and, as the case of the Beanblossom hate hoax shows, many Democrat voters are already so emotionally unstable as to be dangerous.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!